Publications

(Published in EdWeek)

To the Editor:

Although I applaud Adlai Stevenson High School for recognizing the importance of professional learning communities, I am concerned that the school provides only thirty-five minutes a week and that teachers have to supply the rest by coming in early.  For too long teachers have been spending their own resources of time, strength and money to make their classrooms work.  Until school administrations and the public recognize that teaching well involves much more than standing before a class six hours a day, we’re not going to have the universal excellence we strive for.

I want to add that I was lucky enough to be an elementary principal in Madison, Wisconsin from 1974 to 1988, where all elementary schools dismissed an hour and a half early on Mondays so teachers could get together to investigate and deliberate important issues and plan their teaching and assessments.  In Madison’s middle schools at that time, all teachers of the same academic subject had common planning time daily.  As a result, the quality of everyone’s teaching rose to a higher level and many teachers became stars in the district or in the state.  More than a few became national leaders in education. 

Sincerely yours,

Joanne Yatvin

The Oregonian

Monday, April 07, 2008

It's no mystery why so many special education students drop out of school

("Special ed dropouts exceed diplomas," April 3).

The structure of most special education programs does more harm than good.

Regardless of the quality of restricted classes, they create three serious

problems:

1. Usually there is no coordination or teacher communication between special

education classes and regular classrooms. Truly, the right hand doesn't know

what the left hand is doing.

2. Special education kids, who need continuity and consistency more than

other students, get less when they're pulled from one classroom to another.

They don't know what's going on or what they've missed.

3. Special education kids often feel like outsiders in their regular

classrooms. They may think of themselves as "dummies," and some classmates

may think that, too, and say so.

In the K-8 school district where I was superintendent/principal for 12

years, we integrated our special education kids into regular classrooms

fulltime and sent special teachers and aides to those classrooms at the most

crucial times of day to give help to anyone who needed it.

Although special education kids got less instruction that way, what they got

was more relevant to their needs and far less demeaning. Most of them

learned better in fulltime regular classrooms with support, and few went on

to high school feeling like losers.

JOANNE YATVIN Southwest Portland