Special Education Story Archives - Page 2 of 3 - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Documenting Special Education Help, New Human Development Education Requirements

The legislature’s education committees started off the week discussing who is responsible for maintaining records for special education, and teaching about human development.

Individual Education Plans (IEPs) and 504 Plans provide accommodations and services to students with disabilities. Accommodation logs are just one form of documentation that some counties have chosen to use, and not a statewide requirement.

“There’s no reason you have to verify that accommodations were given if you’re the general education teacher, but there’s no specific format that has to be used,” said State Superintendent Michele Blatt. “You could document something in your lesson plans, or you could do a narrative at the end of the week that these three children received online or oral reading of their test or two. There’s not a specific way, but there has to be a way to document that accommodations were provided.”

Blatt was asked to speak to the House Education Committee Monday afternoon as they discussed House Bill 4860. The bill changes code to clarify that a general education teacher cannot be made responsible for accommodation logs, because that responsibility falls upon the special education instructor.

The bill’s lead sponsor Del. David Elliott Pritt, R-Fayette, is also a middle school social studies teacher, and was joined by other educators on the committee to praise the bill. He said teachers were required to review and acknowledge each student’s IEP at the start of the school year.

“I don’t know that everyone quite understands what an unnecessary burden it is to go through a sheet of paper every single day for 50 students and check mark every single accommodation to prove that you’re doing your job that you’re already mandated to do by federal law,” Pritt said. “Not only is it increased, it’s creating more legal liability for teachers than less because what if I miss-mark a student accidentally on a day he wasn’t there, or they weren’t there and I mark ‘I provided accommodations’ and I didn’t and then it comes back?”

Committee Minority Chair Del. Mike Pushkin, D-Kanawha, spoke in opposition of the bill. He said he trusts teachers to teach, but recognized the reality that a lot of students in the state have IEPs while there is a shortage of special education professionals and those that are in schools cannot visit every classroom every day.

“I think that it’s not practical to have someone who’s not in the room responsible for signing off on something that they can’t really verify whether it happened or not,” he said. “I share the concern to the superintendent that it could very well not be done, because we’re putting it in statute that the person responsible for it is not there.”

Blatt said there are close to 50,000 students in the state with IEPs.

“That would just be students with special education, with an IEP,” she said. “That does not include 504s and that does not count our gifted or exceptionally gifted students that we have.”

Blatt told lawmakers a general education classroom can have as many as 30 percent special education students in it.

The bill was recommended to the House floor.

Human Growth and Development Requirement

Tuesday morning in the Senate Education Committee, Senators discussed Senate Bill 468. The bill creates the Baby Olivia Act and requires the State Board of Education to provide courses on human growth and development related to pregnancy and specifically inside the womb. The bill specifies that a 3-minute video entitled Meet Baby Olivia – A Never Before Seen Look At Human Life In The Womb be shown in classrooms.

Senators watched the video and voted it to the Senate floor.

A previous version of the bill would have allowed the Attorney General to sue for damages and injunctive relief on behalf of any or all residents or citizens of West Virginia against any person or entity that violated the new Baby Olivia Act. That component of the bill was removed from a committee substitute.

State Of Emergency Declared For Hampshire County Special Education

The review identified issues with administrative processes, incomplete, incorrect or out-of-date Individualized Education Plans (IEP) and inconsistencies in special education curriculum across the county.

The West Virginia Board of Education has issued a state of emergency for Special Education Services in Hampshire County Schools.

The West Virginia Department of Education’s Office of Accountability conducted a Special Circumstance Review in September of Hampshire County Schools following a “lack of progress” over a three-year period on an improvement plan that was developed for the county.

That plan included increased monitoring and technical assistance from the state, but the state board said sufficient progress wasn’t made during that time.

The September review identified issues with administrative processes, incomplete, incorrect or out-of-date Individualized Education Plans (IEP) and inconsistencies in special education curriculum across the county.

The review also identified inexperienced, uncertified or long-term substitute teachers in special education roles. And three schools in the county do not have any certified special education teachers. The review noted, however, that the county reported finding it challenging to recruit and retain certified staff.

State Superintendent of Schools Michele Blatt was directed by the state board to appoint designees who will coordinate on-site school improvement efforts.

The county will have six months from the time it receives recommendations to make changes before the state board considers additional action, according to a news release.

This designation joins recent state of emergencies issued by the West Virginia Board of Education in Upshur and Logan County Schools. Both school systems were taken over by the state board after investigations by the West Virginia Department of Education discovered financial misconduct.

Literacy Program Unintentionally Pulling Resources From Special Education

As a side-effect of legislation passed earlier this year, 41 percent of special education aides in the state have moved into first grade literacy aide positions.

State Superintendent Michele Blatt told legislators during Monday’s meeting of the Legislative Oversight Commission on Educational Accountability that the shift is an unintended consequence of House Bill 3035.

The Third Grade Success Act is meant to address literacy and numeracy in early education by bringing more aides and specialists into first, second and third grade classrooms across the state. Implementation has begun this fall in first grade classrooms, with second and third grades to follow in the coming years.

Blatt said the data is based on a survey of 48 counties, and represents some 249 aides that have transferred out of special education.

Sen. Amy Grady, R-Mason, said legislation often creates unforeseen issues, but keeping special education aides needs to be addressed.

“We need to find a way that we can entice them to stay in those harder positions,” Grady said.

Del. Sean Hornbuckle, D-Cabell, asked how the special education aides were being replaced.

“Many of them have been replaced with people, new positions, people trying to get into the system,” Blatt said. “We can follow up and see how many of those are actually still shortages, but I do know, we still have some shortages and some day to day subs in those classrooms.”

Addressing The Teacher Shortage In West Virginia

As a new school year begins West Virginia continues to struggle with certified teacher vacancies, but educational leaders are working to change that.

Caitlin Nelson knew from a very young age that she wanted to be a teacher.

“I knew as a ninth grader that I wanted to be a special educator,” she said.

Now she’s living that reality as a K through 5 autism teacher in Raleigh County. But looking around at the changes the state has made in recent years to help people become educators, Nelson can’t help but wish her path had been laid out as smoothly.

“I would have loved to have the opportunity to not have to worry about debt and do what I love,” she said. “I also like the aspect of starting it in high school. If I would have had that opportunity, I would have achieved so much more years before I actually started achieving.”

Facing a teacher shortage that was only exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, West Virginia has begun implementing several changes to get more certified teachers into classrooms.

Earlier this year, House Bill 3035 created the Third Grade Success Act which will bring paraprofessionals into first grade classrooms this fall. A paraprofessional is a teaching-related position within a school responsible for concentrated assistance for students. Under the Third Grade Success Act, these educators will try to address reading and math skills early-on. Literacy and numeracy paraprofessionals will also be added to second and third grade classrooms in the coming years.

But, in a work pool spread so thin, the new paraprofessional positions have already started to draw existing teachers away from special education.

“It is really discouraging as a special education teacher to see people don’t really have the desire for special education,” Nelson said. ‘If I need a sub, I hardly ever get a sub unless I’m personally friends with them. It’s not something people just pick up on the hotline.”

Paraprofessionals will play an important role in the state’s educational future, but teachers continue to be the backbone of the system. And despite alternative pathways, many still get into teaching through a traditional university program.

Teresa Eagle, dean of the School of Education at Marshall University, said today’s recruitment problem is nothing new.

“Enrollment in educator preparation programs, which is what we call teacher ed, across the country has been down drastically, not just recently, but for the last 10 to 15 years,” she said.

Eagle said enrollment is starting to trend back up, but still not where they need to be. In the last few years, she has noticed a change in her students. They’re as passionate as ever, but more and more candidates are moving away from the profession.

In the past, Eagle said education was almost a family business, with children following their parents into the profession. These days, however, people are more likely to steer their children away from teaching due to the low pay as well as increasing difficulty and decreasing respect for the profession.

But the state is trying to make it easier than ever for those who took a detour from education to get certified and into a classroom. Passed in 2021, Senate Bill 14 created alternative pathways to allow people who already have a bachelor’s degree to receive a Professional Teaching Certificate.

“What I’m seeing is people in that program are people who knew they wanted to teach but they allowed parents, family, whatever, to guide them in a different direction for things other than the passion for teaching,” she said. “Now they’ve decided, that’s really what I wanted to do in the first place.”

Autumn Cyprès, dean of West Virginia University’s College of Applied Human Sciences, recognizes the pressing need for alternatives, but urges caution as well as respect for the teaching profession.

“There is an assumption made with the field of education,” Cyprès said. “Everybody went through school. So it’s really easy to jump and say, ‘Well, I went through a school so now I know what it means to be a teacher.’ You have no idea. Just because you went to school doesn’t mean that you understand or are going to be good at being a teacher.”

Cyprès said the demands being made of teachers are not new, but rather are now more formalized which allow programs like the one at WVU to better prepare teachers for the needs and demands of modern students.

“Education is a profession. It is one that is not paid enough in my view, but throwing more money at education isn’t going to be the answer,” she said. “Thinking more deeply about the nuances of education and where the purpose of school bleeds into very deep societal issues in our democracy, of equity, of health care, access to social supports, all of that feeds into the challenges that a teacher needs to face.”

Cyprès said part of the issue facing education is how to help someone understand their level of commitment to the profession. She believes one way is to talk to people who are starting to realize they might like education.

That’s exactly what Carla Warren, the officer of academic support and educator development for the West Virginia Department of Education, has been working to do. She is overseeing the launch of the state’s Grow Your Own initiative which gives students a fast-track into the education field through a combination of dual enrollment/Advanced Placement courses and an accelerated pathway.

“We are entering this first year of full implementation carrying about 177 students over from the pilot year with several students graduated,” Warren said. “So we’re pulling about 177 students forward, and we will begin building from there.”

On top of getting students to commit to the teaching profession early, Warren is taking advantage of the recent action of the U.S. Department of Labor to recognize teaching as a registered apprenticeship.

“When we started, West Virginia was the second state behind Tennessee to register the teaching occupation, as a registered apprenticeship,” she said. “It provides us the opportunity to access workforce dollars that we can use to reach that vision of removing those barriers of cost and providing those wraparound services for students.”

While Grow Your Own is an ambitious solution, it will take at least three years to pay out in any meaningful way. Warren said that in the short-term, the state is looking at paraprofessionals to fill the gaps.

“They’re traditionally individuals who wanted to become a teacher at some point, but life put a barrier up,” she said. “We found that that population, they’re already invested in school, they already know what a school system looks like. They want to be a part of that community. And so we feel like that really is a population that is ripe for the picking to create some very high-quality teachers.”

The potential payoff for Grow Your Own and the Third Grade Success Act is years away. But Dean Eagle renews her hope for the future of teaching each May when her students graduate.

“What I do every year when we graduate students is I watch the students cross the stage, and try to pick out the ones that I’m the proudest of, the ones that I know will go out and do a fabulous job and represent us well, be the critical changemakers in their schools and for their students,” she said. “So far, every year, I’ve been able to identify quite a few students like that. And so that’s where I get my positive outlook, that as long as we keep finding these people and putting them out there, then I know that it’s good for the future. It’s good for kids. The problem, of course, is we need more people like that.”
This story is part of the series, “Help Wanted: Understanding West Virginia’s Labor Force.”

W.Va. Senators Unanimously Approve Bill To Bolster Law Requiring Cameras In Special Ed Classrooms

The West Virginia Senate has passed a bill that strengthens a 2019 law to require cameras in special education classrooms.

SB 261 extends the amount of time that recordings from the cameras must be kept – from three months to a year, and the bill requires that recordings be checked no less than every 90 days.

Additionally, the bill gives county and building administrators the authority to review video footage, and if families request to see recordings, it must be permitted.

The 2019 law was originally put in place following incidents of physical abuse and mistreatment of students with special needs in some West Virginia special education classrooms.

In a recent meeting of the Senate Education Committee, senators heard testimony from Kanawha County mother Beth Bowden whose son had experienced abuse in October.

“Without [the 2019] law, none of this abuse would have been caught,” Bowden said in committee. “However, what we now know is that these cameras are not stopping the abuse.”

Sen. Eric Nelson, R-Kanawha, is the bill’s lead sponsor. He said the bill improves the 2019 law and will better protect children.

“This was brought to my attention by a local [school] board member, because we’ve had, unfortunately, two issues that have made the press here in Kanawha County in two of our middle schools,” Nelson said Monday on the Senate floor. “It’s very unfortunate, because the losers in this are those special children that, unfortunately, maybe cannot speak … This bill gives school educators another move to make sure that these terrible acts do not happen in the future.”

SB 261 passed unanimously in the Senate and now heads to the House of Delegates for consideration.

W.Va. Senators Work To Strengthen Bill Requiring Cameras In Special Ed Classrooms

The Senate Education Committee on Thursday passed SB 261, which would modify and strengthen a 2019 law that requires cameras in special education classrooms.

The bill now clarifies the procedures that schools must follow when dealing with the cameras. Some of the new procedures include designating a specific person, such as a building or county administrator, to review the videos. Another would require that any and all requests to view the videos must be permitted.

The 2019 law was originally put in place following alleged incidents of physical abuse and mistreatment of students with special needs in some West Virginia special education classrooms.

However, some parents have come forward saying the language of the law needs “more teeth.” Senators heard testimony in committee from Kanawha County parents Craig and Beth Bowden who said their son was abused in September.

“I think it’s important for you to know that the abuse from this day, this one day that we got to view, included slaps across the face, slamming heads on desks, throwing children to the floor by the hair of their heads, forcing a child to eat lunch in the bathroom floor, and a countless number of verbal abuse,” said Beth Bowden to senators. “Without [the 2019] law, none of this abuse would have been caught. However, what we now know is that these cameras are not stopping the abuse.”

Upon hearing from the Bowdens, senators adopted two amendments to the bill – one that creates some accountability to ensure videos are being reviewed at least every 90 days, and another that would no longer require schools to delete footage after 90 days, but rather to keep all videos for at least a year.

SB 261 passed unanimously in committee and now heads to the full Senate for consideration.