Just about more than any other thing I hear from new parents was how unwilling the public school system was to accommodate their son or daughter’s special learning needs. It’s pretty sad because I have spoken to public school teachers who complain about having to deal with kids with learning disabilities in their classroom. I can’t help but wonder why a school doesn’t just give students the accommodations they need since it would benefit everyone involved, most importantly—the student. Then I remembered, oh yeah, it’s the money. Assistive technology costs money, usually a lot of it. Once it goes in a student’s IEP, that’s it, the school must provide it. Really it’s rather unfair not to since the school is getting more funding for that child to begin with. But I digress…
The author of this blog: http://specialedlaw.blogs.com/home/2008/01/accessible-e-te.html talks about how important it is for students with reading disabilities to have texts that can be converted to spoken word. He emphasizes how valuable e-texts have been for his son. His post led me to this nifty article which helps parents realize the full potential of the provisions of IDEIA. This article http://www.readingrockets.org/article/16308 provides essential tips for parents including information on the IEP process. It also encourages parents to try out the many e-text programs available before committing to one in the IEP. The blog posting and the article do more than describe some of the resources available, they talk about something perhaps even more important, that no matter what technology is out there, it takes parent intervention to make sure it becomes available to their child. If parents are not advocates for their kids then who will be?
EmTech
3 comments:
In my sixth period class I have about six special education students. Of those six, four simply cannot read past a second grade level (I teach sixth). It is impossible for me to read all the material to them and also keep up with my other students. If I had access to technology that would read it for them, it would be great! I didn't even know this technology existed! But, as you said, money is always the issue so that is probably why we don't have it at my school. Shame on us!
Thank you for sharing this Reading Rockets site. While the article on accessible texts was quite interesting, I was drawn to the many features of the site itself. There are many wonderful resources here, for both teachers and parents. I've bookmarked it for future use and forwarded the link to our learning center too.
If parents don't advocate for their children, great teachers like you do. I had a student years ago that I now still mentor, he has an LD label. When he was in middle school he started doing quite well on his own and his mom called and said that they wanted to remove his label. I encouraged her not to since this may be helpful when he attends high school and college and she listened. Thankfully. He will graduate high school this year and attend community college. I have a hard time when money is always such an obstacle to getting students the assistance needed. I too have bookmarked the sight and want to know if our school is aware of this assistance. Why do so any good things in education cost so much knowing that the system provides so little?
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