Create Specialized Programs — Don't Throw 1:1 Aides at Inappropriate Placements

One-on-one aides should not be used to cover up inappropriate placements.

Now, one-on-one aides who work with students who have IEPs on a dedicated basis, full-time adult for one student, those can be a great situation and there are many thousands of wonderful educators who are in those jobs.

Those jobs don't pay enough and we certainly need to pay more and some of them are very appropriate situations and very helpful to the student, but I'm concerned about the overuse of one-on-one aides to cover up inappropriate placements where there there should be a program created to meet the needs of students with particular needs and because those programs have not been created or because they've been dismantled that's being made up for with one-on-one aids and in some cases that means many more people than you would need in a properly staffed specially designed program right like if you have an EBD program you might have three adults one teacher and two aides and six students.

So that would be a one to two ratio, one adult for every two students.

So it's actually less expensive.

This is the weird part.

A lot of people think this is just about money.

It's actually cheaper to have a properly staffed, specialized program than it is to give every kid a one-on-one.

And yet districts are giving out one-on-ones like candy because they seem to make parents happy.

and they support the aim of full inclusion.

And full inclusion I think really is one of the root problems here, this idea and this ideology that every kid should be in a full inclusion setting no matter what.

What you have to understand is that is illegal under U.S.

law.

Saying that every kid needs to be in a full inclusion setting is against the law because that is an IEP team decision.

Every IEP team gets to decide what is the least restrictive environment for this particular student.

And saying across the board, we only do full inclusion here, we don't offer any specialized programs, we don't have any small classes, any self-contained classes, that is illegal.

And all of the districts that are trying to do this full inclusion thing are doing it because it sounds nice, because it feels better, it's less icky.

Nobody wants to say, hey, your kid gets to be in the EBD program, the behavior classroom.

I get that that feels icky to a certain extent, but you know what?

Those programs worked.

Those programs could be properly staffed.

The educators in them could be properly trained.

The rooms could be set up so that everything would be safe and the rest of the school could operate successfully and that classroom could operate successfully and those students could succeed.

What we're doing now in the name of full inclusion is we're throwing human bodies at students in order to make up for the lack of appropriate programs.

And of course what happens is exactly what you think might happen is that A, it doesn't work very well educationally, that classes are disrupted, students are dysregulated, the students are not learning, the students are out of the classroom a great deal of the time with their one-on-one aid for various reasons, and the people in those jobs are getting injured at astronomical rates.

And I don't think anybody is collecting data on this.

I know OSHA doesn't even apply to public schools, which is kind of messed up if you ask me, but these people are getting injured at enormous rates.

Many of you have written to me and left comments and sent me private messages and emails and things saying, the horrible injuries that you've received in the capacity of working with a student one-on-one.

So I think we really have to evaluate this just blanket use of one-on-ones to make up for the lack of inappropriate placements.

And we have to demand as IEP teams, we have to demand as educators, we have to demand as parents appropriate programs for each student.

Now, of course, many, many students can be in full inclusion.

And sometimes that does mean with a one-on-one.

Like I had students who used wheelchairs and had musculoskeletal and degenerative kind of things going on with their bodies that demanded the need for a one-on-one.

But academically and behaviorally, there was absolutely no reason they shouldn't be in a full inclusion setting.

So I'm absolutely not saying there's anything wrong with that kind of thing.

But when we're simply declining to create a program that we know our students need, like we don't have an EBD program, if we don't have programs for students with autism who really are overwhelmed in a gen ed classroom and need a smaller environment these are iep team decisions and districts need to create the programs dictated by iep teams rather than the other way around the way it actually works is districts decide what to offer and then iep teams kind of squeeze the ieps into that mold, and usually that mold is full inclusion.

And when that doesn't work, we throw more people at it.

I think we've just got to stop doing this.

It's not better for students.

It's not more inclusive.

It is not the least restrictive environment, and it does not set students up for success.

Let me know what you think.