Current Issues Summary

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Current Issues Summary and Response Matt 12/12/2010 Intro As a future special education teacher one of my jobs will be to keep up-to-date on current issues in the education field and let my parents know about any helpful development on these current issues. It is important for teachers to keep tabs on new developments that could be useful to better their understanding of education as a whole. There are a plethora of current issues involving special education. These issues range from more controversial to less controversial. Some of the more controversial issues are the use of tests to place students into special education, how should we grade students with special needs and how to discipline a student who is in special education. At…show more content…
Yell explains the current laws and regulations on disciplining students in special education. Throughout the chapter Yell breaks down the different aspects of discipline in schools in regards to special education. Yell starts out explaining the procedural due process used to create fair polices. Yell also talks about how schools are given the power to act as parent for the child while they are at school. This does not mean that parents have no rights to what happens to their child while they are at school but this allows school to guide student behaviors though discipline. This idea is called in loco parentis (pg. 378). This concept was once more important in schools than it is now but it has brought forth it idea that no matter the student, disabled or not, there needs to be a certain level of responsibility put on all students for their behaviors when they are at school. This would be a great chapter of the book for parents to read because it would help them to understand why the school is doing what it is doing. There may be a lot of different things going on when it comes to discipline that a parent of a student with special needs does not understand and this chapter could given them a good insight to the reasons behind the actions. Also it would give parents the resources they need to maybe challenge what the school is doing if the school does end up over stepping their role in disciplining a student…show more content…
Grading in Special Education by Susan M. Brookhart looks at a different grading strategy. She thinks students in special education need to be graded based upon their goals in their Individual Education Plan's (IEP). Brookhart expresses that grading students in special education at a lower level then everyone else is unfair to both students in special education and to those not in special education. This is an interesting article/book for parents to read because it gives them some ideas of questions to bring up to their child's case mangers on different ways to grade their children in special
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