The Quest for Meaningful Special Education

by Amy Ballin

Overview

Every child should have access to an education that works. The Quest for a Meaningful Special Education follows the educational journeys of nine students with a language-based learning disability (LBLD) who, through a combination of parental advocacy and luck, were removed from a debilitating learning situation and enrolled in a school designed to address their particular learning needs. In the process of following their journeys, the book explores the role of cultures within and outside the school and examines some of the ways that the construction of special education has affected student learning.

In the context of the ongoing national conversation about student academic success, high school dropout rates, the disproportionate number of prison inmates with learning disabilities, the costs of educating students, and the controversy over the placement of minorities in special education, The Quest For a Meaningful Special Education is a timely book that will add a new perspective to current debates.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781475827590
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	12/07/2016
Pages:	204
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Amy Ballin is an associate professor of practices at Simmons College in Boston Massachusetts, where she teaches special education law, classroom collaboration, and social work. Her scholarship and activism focus on creative approaches to teaching pedagogy and social action to eradicate injustices embedded within our educational system.

Table of Contents

Preface: My Personal Educational Journey
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: A Broken System
Chapter 1: Unexpected Consequences
Chapter 2: Special Education: How Did We Get Here?
Chapter 3: The Serendipitous Pathway in the Quest
Chapter 4: Measures of Success
Part II: The Kelsey School: A Model That Works
Chapter 5: Dedicated to the Mission
Chapter 6: The People Method
Chapter 7: Teachers as Learners
Chapter 8: A Carefully Selected Population, a Consistent Academic Structure
Chapter 9: Communication at Kelsey
Chapter 10: Supportive Community
Chapter 11: Safety
Chapter 12: Drawbacks and Privilege
Part III: The Change That Is Possible: Every Child Can Succeed
Chapter 13: A New Vision for Educating All Children
References
About the Author

Editorial Reviews

This is a compelling and instructive book. Filled with vivid details, the book makes visible the aspirations, dashed hopes, social and emotional lives of nine white children and their families and their experiences in school districts that failed to adequately diagnose and educate their children who were later diagnosed as having dyslexia. From the perspectives of families and their children, we get an up-close, unvarnished picture of the special education systems in their public school districts. The power, individual and commonality of the stories lead us to ask whether these stories are more than stories about these children and their families, but a harbinger of a special education system in crisis.This book is a must read for directors of special education, superintendents, teachers and prospective teachers and policy makers. It challenges us to reexamine special education policies, funding and perhaps most importantly the implementation of inclusive and mainstreaming in district public schools.

Theresa Perry

In 1915, John Dewey famously wrote in Schools and Society, 'What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy.' Amy Ballin's moving account of the education provided a lucky few learning disabled students at the Kelsey School is a clear and compelling road map for the education our democratic society should want and provide for all.” —Jeannie Oakes, Presidential Professor in Education Equity, Emeritus, UCLA

“This is a compelling and instructive book. Filled with vivid details, the book makes visible the aspirations, dashed hopes, social and emotional lives of nine white children and their families and their experiences in school districts that failed to adequately diagnose and educate their children who were later diagnosed as having dyslexia. From the perspectives of families and their children, we get an up-close, unvarnished picture of the special education systems in their public school districts. The power, individual and commonality of the stories lead us to ask whether these stories are more than stories about these children and their families, but a harbinger of a special education system in crisis.This book is a must read for directors of special education, superintendents, teachers and prospective teachers and policy makers. It challenges us to reexamine special education policies, funding and perhaps most importantly the implementation of inclusive and mainstreaming in district public schools.” —Theresa Perry, Professor, Departments of Africana Studies and Education, Simmons College; author, “Young Gifted and Black, Promoting High Achievement among African American Students”

“The ethical questions Ballin examines are important for all of us who work in, or who have been personally touched by the field of special education, The in-depth lived experiences of nine young people labeled with learning disabilities described in this book challenges us to look more carefully at how we might inadvertently contribute to the inequitable services provided to our students.” —Janet Sauer, Associate Professor, Special Education, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

“The Quest for a Meaningful Special Education is a useful and necessary reassessment — long-overdue — of an enterprise that began as an insurgency led by parents demanding an accessible and appropriate education for their children, and has now settled into a recognizable and accepted institution with its own established traditions and practices. Amy Ballin challenges and rethinks the status quo from the ground up, focused with laser-like attention on the school experiences of a handful of students struggling to read. With intellectual clarity and deep compassion she illuminates the multiple ways humiliation, doubt, shame, and blame creep into classrooms —regardless of good intentions — whenever the dominant image of the child becomes fixed as an unruly assemblage of deficiencies, and where the teacher is expected, then, to act as a repairman tasked with fixing the broken parts. Dr. Ballin points to a teaching practice that searches out children’s assets, and builds upon what the children themselves bring to school in abundance; she illustrates the massive power unleashed through a culture of collaboration and balance rather than isolation and remediation; she offers detailed and positive solutions that are understandable and within reach. While this is a book aimed at special education practitioners, it is in fact a book for all teachers and parents who want to see children more deeply, and who long for a teaching practice that is more generous and hopeful.” —William Ayers, educational theorist, author, and distinguished professor of education and senior university scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago

From the Publisher

In 1915, John Dewey famously wrote in Schools and Society, 'What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy.' Amy Ballin's moving account of the education provided a lucky few learning disabled students at the Kelsey School is a clear and compelling road map for the education our democratic society should want and provide for all.

Jeannie Oakes

The ethical questions Ballin examines are important for all of us who work in, or who have been personally touched by the field of special education, The in-depth lived experiences of nine young people labeled with learning disabilities described in this book challenges us to look more carefully at how we might inadvertently contribute to the inequitable services provided to our students.

Janet Sauer

The Quest for a Meaningful Special Education is a useful and necessary reassessment — long-overdue — of an enterprise that began as an insurgency led by parents demanding an accessible and appropriate education for their children, and has now settled into a recognizable and accepted institution with its own established traditions and practices. Amy Ballin challenges and rethinks the status quo from the ground up, focused with laser-like attention on the school experiences of a handful of students struggling to read. With intellectual clarity and deep compassion she illuminates the multiple ways humiliation, doubt, shame, and blame creep into classrooms —regardless of good intentions — whenever the dominant image of the child becomes fixed as an unruly assemblage of deficiencies, and where the teacher is expected, then, to act as a repairman tasked with fixing the broken parts. Dr. Ballin points to a teaching practice that searches out children’s assets, and builds upon what the children themselves bring to school in abundance; she illustrates the massive power unleashed through a culture of collaboration and balance rather than isolation and remediation; she offers detailed and positive solutions that are understandable and within reach. While this is a book aimed at special education practitioners, it is in fact a book for all teachers and parents who want to see children more deeply, and who long for a teaching practice that is more generous and hopeful.

William Ayers