Perhaps the most frustrating situation in education today arises when a student is simply unwilling to work. The current atmosphere of leniency both at home and at school has sadly stripped many students of their motivation to work hard to learn. There is nothing special ed or any other academic repair program can do to give a student the willingness to move forward. Parents trying hard to give their children their every desire sometimes wind up removing the motive for working. Schools, misinterpreting No Child Left Behind’s edict that every child be given the necessary tools for success, pass students who do not deserve passing grades. By the time these students reach their final years in high school, they are far behind in academic achievement, do not have the organizational skills to move forward, and have no clue how to fix the problem.
Special Education can:
Help a child overcome or cope with a diagnosed learning disability
Give a developmentally disabled child the opportunity to maximize his learning potential
Teach coping skills that can be applied throughout the child’s life
Give support and connection to students whose disabilities leave them feeling left out and unable to cope
Special education is not designed to:
Cure laziness in an otherwise normal child
Impart a work ethic where none exists
Repair damage done by drug or alcohol abuse
Make up for neglect or abuse within the family
Give a student direction if he is not interested in succeeding
A student who is, by his own preference or family habit, not a reader at home will not do well in school, period. Vocabulary and concepts outside the student’s daily world are available only through exposure. Knowing how to read is literacy. Applying that skill to actual reading is learning. Non-readers tend to do poorly on standardized tests and will often test below grade level in several academic areas. They are not handicapped, and special ed cannot help them.
A student who is not encouraged to be responsible at home will often be irresponsible in school, missing homework assignments and, as a result, doing poorly on tests and quizzes. This is also not a disability, and special ed cannot help these students, either.
A student who feels there will be no repercussions for his behavior, including lack of attention in class and acting out will generally miss a great deal of learning time. This, too, is not a disability. Special ed will only help such a student if the problem is so severe and long-standing that he is considered to have a behavior disorder.