Special Education Revisited: A Response to Zollers and Ramanathan

After spending one day each week during the fall semester of 1998 trying to understand how students with disabilities are served in an Edison school, Ms. Zigmond has concluded that Nancy Zollers and Arun Ramanathan did Seven Hills Charter School great injustice in their December 1998 Kappan article. Zollers and Ramanathan will respond next month. I LEAVE the thruway at Exit 16 and at the end of the ramp make right turn up the hill. Another right puts me on narrow residential street, cars parked on both sides, signs indicating resident parking only. The school is ahead of me, on the left. It's two buildings, really, joined together to make school. They rise from concrete playground/parking lot, where I leave my car in one of the visitors' spaces. I ring the bell, am buzzed in, and sign the visitors' book. I check in at the office, then go about my business. I know my way around by now. I am familiar figure in the school. I've taken pages and pages of observation notes. I've watched for hours and hours. In this one K-8 school, I've seen the full array of special education services, from inclusion with co-teaching to intensive one-on-one remedial instruction. I'm impressed. Wednesday, September 9, 1:30 p.m. The special education instructional assistant, fully certified general education teacher, has gone to fetch Annie from her third-grade class. It's time for pull-out, one-on-one spelling lesson. They get settled in an instructional space tucked out of the way, near the school elevator. They are both sitting on child-sized chairs, small table between them. On the table are small whiteboard, Annie's spelling list, and some colored marking pens. Annie reads her spelling list. There are four three-letter words, each with short a sound. Annie taps on the letters, sounding out the words. Then the teacher writes one of the words on the left side of the board, and Annie copies it in the space on the right. They proceed down the list. At the third word, Annie has trouble with the orientation of the d. The teacher has her trace the d that the teacher has printed, then try it again, but Annie doesn't have the sequence of motor movements correct. So they trace it again, chanting rhythmically, Make circle, add line. They do it over and over. It clicks. Annie prints six d's, all oriented correctly! Then she copies the last word of the list. Finally, they erase the whiteboard, and Annie gets ready for dictation. The teacher says, mat, and Annie writes it correctly. The teacher says, lag, and she writes it correctly. The teacher says, sad, and Annie writes s-a-b sees her mistake, erases the b, vocalizes the sequence of movements for d, and corrects the word. Good checking your the teacher says brightly. Then she dictates rap, and Annie writes it correctly. Wednesday, October 7, 12:30 p.m. Third-grade math. The children are divided into three groups. One group is working with the general education third-grade teacher, one is working with the special education teacher, and one is doing independent seatwork. The special education teacher has six students in her group, including Brad, who has serious handwriting deficiencies among other problems and has an individualized education program (IEP). The special education teacher is teaching the students how to convert addition problems written horizontally to vertical orientation so that they can be solved. She is emphasizing the importance of lining up the numbers in appropriate columns. The first problem is 87 + 113. Brad's worksheet has been copied from his workbook and enlarged on the copier to give him more space to rewrite the problems and write his answers. After about 10 minutes of working independently, with the teacher monitoring their work, the students and teacher check the answers. Brad's written work is so illegible that it is not clear whether he himself can read what he has written. …