I wonder if Arne Duncan is trying to end the category of special education?

[LWolf]

35. A few thoughts:

As a former IB teacher, I can attest to this: the IB PYP is intended to be taught to all students. The MYP? Still pretty accessible, but getting harder. The Diploma program? Not so much. It requires a very high level of thinking skills, but also strong work/study habits and the ability to follow through and "stick" with it that not all students bring to the table.

The bottom line is that all students, SPED and other, aren't going to succeed with IB courses.

Children are different. They learn differently, they have different capabilities. WE DON'T NEED ONE-SIZE FITS ALL mandates.

There's some truth to this statement:

“We know that when students with disabilities are held to high expectations and have access to a robust curriculum, they excel.”

Sort of.

We know that holding ALL students to high expectations gets them further than holding them to low expectations. THE POINT, THOUGH, IS THE HIGH STAKES.

When we hold high expectations and work hard together to reach them, where ever we end up, we're successful. The higher the expectations, the less likely that everyone will get there. That's okay, if the journey, the process, is the point. It's not if everyone who doesn't get all the way there, and their teachers, have "failed."

That's the contradiction: if we want the best results, we set the bar high, work hard, and then celebrate. If we set high stakes on that bar, either every teacher fails because 100% of people of any age are not going to achieve at the top levels, or we set the bar lower so that more can reach it, thus reinforcing the "low expectation" nonsense. Then we're failures because we set it to low.

Under Duncan's system, we fail NO MATTER WHAT.

Which was the corporate point, right?

It's not the CCSS themselves I take issue with. It's the destructive political use, the manipulation, abuse of those, and any other standards.