Joan F. Goodman

The Individualized Education Program A Retrospective Critique

It is argued in this article that although the original purpose of the Individualized Education Program (IEP) was for it to serve as an accountability device, it has become an instructional as well as evaluative mechanism. A review of the forces that led to the inclusion of the IEP in P.L. 94-142—prior legislation, professional articles, testimony at hearings—indicates that proponents hoped that individualized programming would diminish categorical placements in favor of least restrictive environments, encourage parental participation in establishing and overseeing educational goals, and provide a method to evaluate childrens progress on mutually agreed-upon objectives. The IEP was never intended to specify what or how teachers should teach. Given the luxury of hindsight, however, our analysis suggests that the provisions for establishing “short-term objectives” to be evaluated through “objective criteria” made it more likely than not that programs would choose specific skills and attainments as objectives, and rely on teacher directed instructional methods. The IEP regulations make it difficult to pursue a child-directed, highly interactive teaching approach with ends left fluid. Suggestions are made for enlarging the construction of the curriculum and evaluation procedures by establishing multiple alternative objectives, using portfolios or videotapes for assessment, including narrative reviews for evaluation, and substituting as objectives, in some instances, methods rather than outcomes. More important, debate on the IEP is encouraged.

Charter Management Organizations and the Regulated Environment Is It Worth the Price

Urban minority children are increasingly being educated at public schools run by charter management organizations (CMOs) characterized by a highly rule-ordered and regulated environment. These rules, enforced through continuous streams of reinforcements and penalties, while contributing to a tight focus on academics and a safe culture, have associated costs. The article scrutinizes four CMO commonalities, along with their implications: the pervasive adult monitoring of students, targeting behaviors tangential to learning, attributing independent agency to children who deviate, and student derogation by adults. It is concluded that rules can indeed be protective, but if not counterbalanced with opportunities for genuine choice and personal agency, the rules may quell students’ desires and shrink their aspirations. A blanketing emphasis on obedience can create conditions for accepting instruction, but alone, it is dangerous, for students will not have developed their own compass to resist negative models.

School discipline in moral disarray

It is argued that current school disciplinary policies are ineffective instruments for delivering moral messages: they are poorly justified; fail to distinguish moral violations (violence, vandalism, deception) from conventional school‐limited violations (attendance, dress codes, eating venues), leaving the impression that dress code violations and forgery are equivalent; conflate sanctions, including presumed punishments (detentions and suspensions), with other forms of corrections (parent‐conferences, positive and negative reinforcement) and apply them without distinction to moral and non‐moral wrongdoing. To be morally instructive school disciplinary codes should separate three types of infractions – moral, derivatively moral and conventional. The derivatively moral include rules that while not moral in isolation (eating outside the cafeteria) become imbued with moral attributes under particular interpretations; conventional wrongs have no moral valence but are rules designed for orderly school management. Sanctions, too, should be applied differentially according to category of infraction. Punishment, if used, is appropriate only for intentional moral wrongdoing, connected to acknowledgement of culpability, and conditional upon a clear articulation of the schools moral objectives that is persuasive to children and the community.

Maladaptive Behaviours in the Young Child with Intellectual Disabilities: A reconsideration

In recent years, we have come to appreciate the close parallels in the development of children with and without intellectual disabilities. Nonetheless, there are a set of behaviours found with so much greater frequency among children with intellectual disabilities that they are commonly considered characteristics of the condition. These include repetitive behaviours, also described as perseverative and passive behaviours or disengagement from activity. The repetition and passivity are manifest during spontaneous play and cognitive activities. Thought to be maladaptive impediments to developmental progress, they are generally targets of educational intervention. In this article we raise the possibility that repetition and passivity, though clearly present in young children with intellectual disabilities, may be misconstrued as always being an impediment to progress. Indeed, these behaviours may at times be appropriate and adaptive responses to coping in a world that moves quickly with a mind that moves slowly.

Played Out? Passive Behavior by Children with Down Syndrome during Unstructured Play.

Young children with Down syndrome are characterized as both cognitively and behaviorally passive. Parents and educators often view passive behavior as a failure to initiate or to sustain involvement. As a result, they often interrupt such behaviors and redirect the childs activity. An opportunity for the child to express initiative might be lost. What would happen if there were no adult interruptions? This study investigates the duration, frequency, and trajectory of passive behavior in a sample of 14 children with Down syndrome and 14 typically developing children, matched for mental age, race, and gender, over a 47-minute independent play session. Passive episodes were coded for point of occurrence in the play session. In our sample, children with Down syndrome exhibited more time in passive behavior than their typically developing counterparts did. For some children with Down syndrome, passivity increased commensurate with time spent in the play session. Implications from these findings for both research and practice are given.

Respect-due and respect-earned: negotiating student–teacher relationships

Respect is a cardinal virtue in schools and foundational to our common ethical beliefs, yet its meaning is muddled. For philosophers Kant, Mill, and Rawls, whose influential theories span three centuries, respect includes appreciation of universal human dignity, equality, and autonomy. In their view children, possessors of human dignity, but without perspective and reasoning ability, are entitled only to the most minimal respect. While undeserving of mutual respect they are nonetheless expected to show unilateral respect. Dewey and Piaget, scions of the same liberal tradition, grant children a larger degree of autonomy and equality thereby approximating the full respect conditions reserved for adults in the prior theories. In this article, after reviewing the premises of respect, I attempt to blend the divide – between minimal and full respect – by separating respect-due from respect-earned. While the former, premised on human dignity, should be granted unconditionally to all, the latter is contingent upon qualities that one possesses or acquires over time. Adding the notion of respect-due is a constraint on the prevalent school practice of turning respect into demands for deference. The relevance of this distinction is discussed in terms of student–teacher relationships.

Outcomes of Adoptions of Children from India: A Subjective versus Normative View of "Success.".

ABSTRACT Based on the young adult adjustment of adoptees who came to America from Mother Theresas orphanages, we suggest that the concept of “outcomes” needs to be stretched. Most adoption studies look at outcome from a normative perspective-the success of the adoption as compared to accepted standards of adjustment-ignoring the equally important subjective perspective-the success of the adoption according to the parents and child. We found that while this group of adoptees could be considered “unsuccessful” from a normative standpoint-46% were identified by their parents as having special needs-they were pleased with their lives and themselves as were their parents. Furthermore, those identified by adoptive parents as having difficulties expressed no more dissatisfaction than those not so identified.

Repetitive Activity in the Play of Children With Mental Retardation

It has been widely observed that young children with mental retardation engage in more repetitive activity than other children although the meaning and purpose of such activity is unclear. To better understand repetitive play, we investigated amount, quality, and persistence of spontaneous repetitive play and alternative types of play with 14 children with Down syndrome and 14 children without delay. Children with Down syndrome engaged in more repetitive activity, however the quality of repetitive and non-repetitive play was similar. Results suggest that repetitive play may serve the same constructive purposes for children with Down syndrome and children without delay. Educators should evaluate carefully when repetitive play may be useful and when it needs to be interrupted and redirected.

Student authority: Antidote to alienation

The widespread disaffection of students from school is manifested in academic failure, indifference, and defiance. These problems can be alleviated, I argue, when an authority structure is developed that combines three components — freedom, power, and legitimacy. Authority understood as either power or freedom is apt to subvert students’ school attachment even while attempting to strengthen it; authority that combines power and freedom, when perceived by all parties as serving a legitimate mission, is apt to enhance engagement. The bonding potency of authority is augmented when it is joined to strongly marked school purposes and dispersed to students. The three components of authority are interwoven with school visions and student authority into various patterns: some schools lean more towards power, others more towards freedom; some operate under highly moralized and totalizing visions, others under vaguer, less moral, and less encompassing visions. The nature and interdependence of the three components and the trade-offs under various combinations are discussed. While legitimate authority has many faces, if schools are to be engaging places for students it is essential that the norms promoted are welcomed by them; advantageous to that process is ordaining students with authority to advance prevailing norms.

The diagnostic fallacy: A critique of Jane Mercer's concept of mental retardation

Abstract Jane Mercers influential book on mental retardation is criticized because it essentially reverts to traditional “diagnosticism”—the assumption that retardation is an entity of biological origin and unfavorable sequelae, rather than a set of behaviors stemming from a diversity of causes. It is argued that this view point is fallacious because it is oversimplified and educationally irrelevant. Instruction is rarely affected by knowledge of original etiology, and therefore elaborate pluralistic assessment procedures designed to unravel cause are not helpful. Criteria and instruments appropriate for classification are discussed in terms of the purposed to be served by school designations.