DEBORAH TAUB: So thank you very much for having me. Our goals today are to

Transcription

1 DEBORAH TAUB: So thank you very much for having me. Our goals today are to identify appropriate grade-aligned goals for all students, develop UDL or Universal Design for Learning-inspired lists of common supports for instructing students in your class that you can draw upon for all instruction, and begin to design assessments, both formative and summative that address these goals. Now, one goal that I didn't put on here that's certainly going to be addressed is doing this within different classrooms, especially, my experience is mostly with inclusion classrooms. So that's where I m going to be coming from, but certainly we'll talk about if you're in settings that don't have that situation, what you can do. We're going to start by looking at some common visions and concerns. We're going to look at planning for instruction assessment, including teaming, alignment, and beginning to use Universal Design for Learning for instruction assessment. And then moving forward, just strategies for staying sane. I'm not going to guarantee you're going to be sane, because clearly I m not the picture poster girl for that, but I do think that you already have a lot of strategies in your toolboxes that you can use for that. So sharing some of those is one of my goals today, is making sure that we aren't constantly reinventing the wheel for everything. But first I want to talk about who it is specifically that I m focusing on in this session. Now certainly this applies to all students, but as Sharon pointed out, I ve worked primarily with alternate assessments and that one percent population of students who would be taking that alternate assessment, so the students with very complex needs. And I wanted to share with you some of the most recent research that's 1

2 out there about these students. This all comes from the National Alternate Assessment Center, which is now folded into the -- oh, and I always forget this acronym, NCSC, which stands for the -- Sharon, do you remember? SHARON: National Center -- no. DEBORAH TAUB: National Collaborative? National Center and State Collaborative. There you go, NCSC, National Center and State Collaborative. It's the new grant, a relatively new grant that is out. It's a multi-year grant that is looking at designing a alternate assessment for that one percent that focuses on the common core. So I have quite a few slides in here that are from their presentations and their data just because they are the ones doing this right now, so why not share the news? One of the things that NAAC did was they did a survey of seven states where they used, and I believe you guys used this, the learning characteristics inventory where they asked people to -- asked teachers or people familiar with these students to answer questions about their students. So this is the results just from seven states. More than seven states are certainly using the LCI now, but just to give you an idea of the overview of what these kids look like these days. So 43% of the students taking alternate assessments are reading sight words; 22% of those students are reading fluently at a basic level. So they may not necessarily be making inferences, but if you give them a basic story, they're able to read that story. Fifteen percent have no observable text awareness, and 20% are aware of text and print, but they may not necessarily have a significant number of sight words, okay. 2

3 This is really interesting to me because often when I go into trainings, what I hear is, well all -- none of these students can do anything. Nothing. Well, clearly, that is not the case. We certainly have some students who we haven't quite figured out their communication level and we are going to talk about those students. I'm actually going to show you a video of a student that for me is very much the reason that I do this work, but I also want to talk about mathematics a little bit. So 43% of the students have computational procedures with a calculator; 22% are able to apply procedures to solve problems; 15% have no observable awareness; and 20% rote count. That's actually pretty good. I mean, when we look at these students, we look at their needs. They've got a lot of skills that we can build on. Now, we still have to work on those small percentages, those 15%, those 18% in reading, and figure out how to reach them, because on the things this data showed is that there's no change really in these percentages across grades. So we would expect that as you go from elementary to middle to high school that you gain more skills, but what we're finding is that in reading and in math and in communication, it's pretty static. The statistics stay pretty much the same, which to me brings up the question of, what do we need to change? Because clearly, clearly our goal is that students are going to learn. And they're going to develop more skills. And if our data is showing that that's not the case, then we need to do something about that. So, let's look at the language communication piece. A brief -- just to make sure we'll all on the same page. Pre-symbolic language learners are usually those students who we aren't sure what their communication system is. I want to be really clear about 3

4 this. This doesn't mean that they don't have a communication system. It just means that we aren't quite sure what it is yet. In some cases, and I ll talk a little bit more about this research, but in some cases, what we're finding is that they do actually have a communication system, but the people who work with them are not listening to them. All right, I see all these people going, yep, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So you've been in those classrooms where the students you know, say or do or scream or cry. And everybody goes, oh, no communication there. And you're thinking, ah, very clearly just told you he didn't want to do that. Very clearly just told you that. So we've seen those students. So ten percent of the students in these seven states were pre-symbolic language users; 17% were emerging, which means that they're starting to build a communication system. They're still a bit inconsistent with it, so -- but they're getting there. And then 72% were using some form of symbolic language. This could be pictures, this could be objects, this could be words, it could be signs, it could be Braille, any symbolic system out there. And really, when you think about language, pretty much anything is symbolic, so. Now, here's the breakout. When I talked about the status -- statistics not moving very much, here's the breakout by grade bands. So let's start with the biggest chunk, the symbolic users. In elementary school, we've got 67% of the students who are symbolic. In middle school, we're up to 72%, and in high school, we're still at 72%. So clearly we need early intervention, clearly we need to do this -- we need to hit this hard. But I'm going to talk -- this is not hopeless, this is not scary as you're going to see, as we continue going through this, there's hope. But let's just look at the rest of the data. 4

5 In the pre-symbolic group, we have 12% roughly in elementary, 10% in middle school, and 9% in high school. So we do have a little tiny bit of movement into that emerging group, the emerging group and then into the symbolic group. But it is pretty small. And the studies that are going on right now and the studies that have gone on in the past, show that with some really kind of intense -- not even that intense, honestly, with some intervention, some research-based intervention, it is possible for these students to make progress in their symbolic language learning. So, here's the more concerning piece. Of the 50% of the students in the emerging or pre-symbolic levels in the seven states sample, only -- I'm sorry. Of the students who are in that pre-symbolic or emerging group, only 50% were given access to an alternate -- an AAC, an Augmentative Communication System. So basically, what we're saying is the student didn't have a communication system. So we didn't give him one. Okay. Well, clearly, we need to work on that. And I want to point out, that when I hear AAC or at least when I used to hear AAC, my immediate thought was, oh my gosh. Another system to learn and those little boxes to carry around and the kid's going to throw it, it's going to break, it's this, it's that. We're not even talking about hi-tech. We're talking anything. We're talking the Velcro boards with the pictures on it. We're talking, you know, a pointer system. We're talking anything. So this really encompasses any kind of communication system that involves assistance to it, okay. So looking at some of the research from the past 20 years. Michael McSheehan and his group in North Carolina -- in New Hampshire, sorry, looked at a 116 articles that were published between 1987 and 2007 in referee journals. So they only looked at peer 5

6 referee journals. And they wanted to find journal -- or articles that described a communication intervention, involved one or more participants with severe intellectual and developmental disabilities. Of those journals, evidence reviewed indicated that 96% of the studies reported some positive change in an aspect of communication. So in other words, of the studies done, there was some improvement for the students in 96% of the time. These findings support the provision of communication intervention to students and people with severe intellectual and developmental disabilities. In other words, sometimes what I hear are statements such as, well, if you can show me how you teach this to a dog, then I can see how you'd teach it to my student. And the idea -- I know, it's not my favorite statement I've ever heard. And the idea to me, that I hear in that is, why should I even bother? Why should I bother trying to introduce a communication system? Why should I bother trying to introduce academics? Why should I bother doing any of this? Because the student's not going to get it. And one of the things that we're going to have today as a common foundation is this idea of presumed competence. We are going to assume that everybody is capable. Everybody can do it, that there is an intent and a reason behind it. And this -- you know, going back to communication trials, how many times have you seen somebody -- there's a great video that NAAC has where they show a student who -- his communication training consisted of the teacher asking discrete trials. And so for an hour a day she would say, is your name Bruce? Is your name Bruce? And he was supposed to answer yes or no for ten trials in a row, take a break, ten trials in a row, take a break. So over and over this child would be asked, is your name Bruce, and 6

7 answer yes or no. And you can see in the video that the first few times, he's like, yes. Yes. And then he starts -- he gets this smile on his face. And he's like, no. no, uh-uh. And the teacher's going, oh, well, you know, he doesn't have a communication system. And I m thinking, yes. Yes he does. He's communicating to you that he's really tired of this question. You're lucky that he's not throwing the yes-no board across the room, honestly, because come on, who wants to sit there for hours -- can you imagine if that were your day? I mean, just hours of your day? Is your name Jeannine? Is your name Jeannine? Who would think that's a good idea? Well, you know, we get -- what happens is we get stuck in this piece where we say we have to prove it. We have to prove that this kid can talk. We have to prove this kid has a communication system. And one of the easiest ways to do that is data, is having those discrete trials. So from a data perspective, you can kind of understand, you know, if I can say this kid can answer yesno questions correctly ten times, but do we really have to have the same yes-no questions? All day, every day, because I ll tell you, that would make me crazy. Even as the teacher, that would make me crazy. So an example from the work that Michael McSheehan's group looked at is by Charity Rowland and Phil, I think, Schweigert. And in the beginning of their study, the students we all considered to be pre-symbolic. They had not demonstrated an association between a thing and what it might represent. So for instance, some common ones we've all seen. Spoon and eating, pencil and writing, green and go, and red and stop, things like that. So the goal was to move the students along this 7

8 continuum, this gradient towards a symbolic communication learner. What they did was they provided 15 to 20 minutes, each day for six and half months, of intervention. So again, not a huge amount of time, 15 to 20 minutes. Of the 41 participants, 35 acquired tangible symbols during direct intervention. So when I said there's hope, this is what I m talking about. It's not that we have to take these kids out of the classroom and spend four hours a day just working on communication. We can imbed it into instruction; we can imbed it into their daily experience. And we can also have 15 to 20 minutes of kind of intensive, direct instruction on communication. Twenty-eight of those students learned novel symbols within the first three exposures. So thinking back to our lovely -- I ll even bring it back up, this, where we don't see a lot of growth. I'm going to ask you, and I want you to start just by kind of sharing with your partner, why do you think this is? I mean, if it's -- it's clearly not easy. And I m not even going to begin to say it is, but clearly we can make progress, so why do you think that we are stuck where we are? What do you think's happening? So talk amongst yourselves for a few seconds. So I want to share out some of what I was hearing and then I ll give you guys an opportunity to share some things that maybe I didn't hear. Some of the things I was hearing were, these are really complex kids, and there's a lot involved. It's not just the academics that teachers are dealing with, there's other pieces. There's care, there's other things that are going on. Also, I heard teachers not necessarily knowing what to do with these students. So if you see the discrete trial, at least they're trying something, which absolutely, that's a positive. We want people to keep trying with these students. 8

9 The field as a whole for these students, for these students with significant and complex needs, really has just changed so much in the past ten years. So there's a lot to continue to learn, and we still don't know it all, clearly. I also heard people saying, well, you know, they would get confused between -- and you were saying this and I m trying to think how you said it because you said it so nicely, getting confused between the care issues and the academic issues. And spending your time doing that care can really suck you in and take your time, and sometimes you lose sight of the other pieces. I heard some people saying they just -- nobody had thought to teach the student a language. What else? And I ll grab your mic so that people can hear. Anything anybody wanted to share out from that? Oh, I also heard lots and lots of different goals that were there for the students, so you've got people coming in, service providers coming in to the classrooms, you've got students going out of the classrooms, so there's a lot of things happening for these students, plus they have so many goals for so many different things. AUDIENCE MEMBER: I often find -- is it on? Beause I can't hear myself. I often find that sometimes without that visible growth, educators get kind of that diminished, I m not making any progress. So if they don't see what I think you see with children who typically show you that they're gaining, there's a little bit of a it's not working attitude. DEBORAH TAUB: Oh, absolutely. And we all -- I mean, think of that wonderful, positive feedback when somebody learns something or makes progress. I know some of you were here when my little two-year-old was around, and I see growth in her every single day. And that's very rewarding. And it pushes me to want to teach her more things 9

10 because I m like, oh, now we have this sign. Oh, what else can we learn? Okay, let's go somewhere else. So I agree. I think that some of it is just, you're doing the same thing over and over and think about that teacher doing the discrete trials with that student. What she's seeing is, we started to make progress, oh, now we're going down, which is very disheartening. AUDIENCE MEMBER: My group has nominated me to speak. But one of the things that we were talking about was the fact that in pre-service, many of the special ed teachers are not shown or understand how to manage staff. So oftentimes, we could be utilizing the staff or we're underutilizing the staff to actually move forward in this. And so when we talk about a lack of time, sometimes when I sit back I have to talk with teachers and say, really, let's look and see. You got the staffing. DEBORAH TAUB: Right, right. That's a really good point. I know as a first-year teacher, my experience with my first paraprofessional was less than stellar. So I think that's a good point. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah, we talked a little bit about the pre-service and what's going on with professional development and especially for special ed teachers who are really in a, like a multi-disabilities type of setting who aren't getting some of the really new literacy-type training, and so when you are thinking about what kind of communication or literacy-type of experiences we can provide to students who may need something more, once they -- at least, traditionally, once you're in that multidisabilities setting, it may be that you're not just not getting -- we're not even going -- you're not even going there. Literacy, are you kidding? You know, so it's not that you 10

11 know, maybe if they were in a different setting they might have different exposure and you might see that spark where oh my gosh, they're responding to that. But -- and we also talked about the behavior issues, that sometimes you're just dealing with the behaviors and not the addressing, although we know that behavior -- most of the behaviors, communication or is related to that, so. DEBORAH TAUB: I know, there's a lot. And that's why we call these students, students with complex needs. There's a lot wrapped up in these students, and you know, I think you brought up some really good points. First of all, the pre-service for teachers. How many people here have taught in the classroom? All right, now of those teachers, how many people in their -- I m sorry, this spider just keeps coming closer and closer to me. I'm sorry. There you go. Okay. Sorry. I was trying to ignore it and be professional, but it was like, bzzz. So of the people who taught in the classroom, how many of you had to take, not as an elective, but had to take a literacy course or a reading course? All right, that's good. That's good. How many had to take a math concept -- a math course? How about a course in how to teach math? All right, because sometimes they're different. How about science? Well, the numbers are going down. Our numbers are going down. Okay, all right. And just out of curiosity, how many of you had to take a course in communication? All right. So you guys actually have a pretty good background. I mean, not everybody raised their hands, but there's still some things. AUDIENCE MEMBER: I think you need to recognize that a lot of us took those classes in grad school. 11

12 DEBORAH TAUB: So what she's saying is a lot of people took those classes in grad school as opposed to undergrad, and a lot of our teachers are coming out of undergrad. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah, and just piggybacking, note that just about everyone in this room is a PaTTAN consultant. There are very few teachers here, and that is a big problem in the classroom -- down in the trenches, because school districts are cutting back. We're not allowed to go anywhere or you know, ESY means that they're working. You're not allowed to take off and there's no money for training, so that's a big issue. DEBORAH TAUB: Oh, absolutely. And there are lots of factors playing into this. I know -- so I came at it from -- I did not go into teaching directly from undergrad. I got a Master s first, because in New York, that was pretty much required. But I ll tell you that the majority of my classes were on how to socially integrate students into an inclusive classroom. The academic courses I took were electives. So I m great. Or I was great at the social integration when I first started teaching, but they handed me, you know, I had all these students. I was doing K through sixth grade inclusion, which was an interesting experience to do all at once. And I would have students who were working on multiplication and I was messing up even the most basic concepts in math. Like you know, two times three, is that two sets of three or three sets of two, and I would say it the wrong way. And my principal thankfully, partnered me with a very strong math teacher and made sure that I started to learn those concepts, because it just hadn't been part of my education. But I think you're right. There's whole kinds of things going on there. So anyway. All right. 12

13 So individuals with cognitive and sensory disabilities learn to use symbols for communication within the hour of instruction distributed across a few days. That's very impressive. That's very impressive, especially as we think about these students who don't look like they're making progress. But it needs to be consistent. It needs to be research-based. It needs to be informed. And that's where you guys come in, lucky you, to help train people in doing this. And there are lots of ways to do this. I do know, you guys are part of the NCSC grant, correct? Pennsylvania's part of the NCSC grant, the NCSC grant? And one of the things that they are doing is they're building a community of practice, and I m sure that people in this room will be a part of that, or at least some. And then, the idea is that they are going to disseminate information about the most current research, about the most current information to other people. You guys are lucky again, PaTTAN, Pennsylvania, you guys are very lucky because you already have those inroads into how to build those communication systems. So your dissemination of information may probably -- will probably be faster than some other states, but I will tell you that I know that one of the goals of that project is to help people understand how to build communication systems, so they're going to be having some webinars on that and some training on that, so there's more help coming, which is always good to hear. The Rowland and Schweigert study also showed that -- and this is really important, historically, we've always thought that students had to go from concrete objects to pictures. And the pictures even had a hierarchy within them, you know, so you went to line -- did you go to photos first and then line-drawings? Photos first and then line-drawings and then you could move on to more symbolic word-type things. 13

14 Well, what their study showed was that these different levels of representation did not occur in a predetermined sequence. Nor did it require experience with every level of representation. So in other words, a student may learn two-dimensional line-drawings or printed words without demonstrating learning first of objects or photos, okay. That's kind of cool. I know when I was teaching, we always -- because I worked specifically -- I had a range of students, but the ones with whom I did my doctoral research were kids with autism. And we spent a lot of time debating which photos to use to show to them, because you wanted to be careful, because if you showed them one, they'd have trouble generalizing to the next one, and you know. So if we showed this train and they got on you know -- in DC, we have colors on our trains, so there's a blue line and a red line and orange line, so you had to be careful, because you didn't want to show them the orange line picture train and then expect them to get on the blue line picture train, because that could cause some meltdowns for some students. So it's nice to know that we could have just skipped the whole photo drama and moved on to something else that had a little less inherent problems with generalization, which would have been good. So some things just to think about. Many of the students who are described as the lowest may not have received any AAC, either instruction or aids needed to demonstrate the more complex knowledge and skills. Many students not demonstrating the use of symbolic language most likely have not received researchbased instruction. So the question is, should students who have not received researchbased instruction really be excluded from inclusive settings? Because one of the things 14

15 that I hear is, well, this student can't -- when this student gets better at communicating, then we'll include him with all the other kids. Well, we need to rethink that premise a little bit, okay. So I want to meet -- show you Bruce. Bruce in this picture is 18. And he is a student who did not have access to an AAC at all throughout his educational career. And this is what a typical lesson with Bruce looked like. It would be helpful if we could hear Bruce, huh? Hmm. Hold on one second, I ll restart that. [VIDEO BEGINS] TEACHER: I ve got one more question. [VIDEO ENDS] DEBORAH TAUB: What I m going to do is I m going to put my mic right up next to it so you guys can hear it. Whoops. Come on, Bruce. You know, you check your technology, you check your technology. [VIDEO BEGINS] TEACHER: Let's look at the 23 rd. Was the forecasted temperature higher or lower than the actual temperature? Okay, good work. Thanks for paying attention. I've got one more question, okay? Look at these forecasted temperatures. How many days was the forecasted temperature higher than the actual temperature. BRUCE: [inaudible] 15

16 TEACHER: Okay, that's it. Thank you, you did good work. Really nice, good job. [VIDEO ENDS] DEBORAH TAUB: All right, so what did you notice about Bruce's lesson? What do you notice about this experience? AUDIENCE MEMBER: It s one-sided. DEBORAH TAUB: I'm sorry, what? AUDIENCE MEMBER: It's kind of one-sided. DEBORAH TAUB: It's kind of one-sided. It's a little one-sided. Anything else? AUDIENCE MEMBER: Did he give an answer? DEBORAH TAUB: All right, the question is, did he give an answer? Did Bruce ever give an answer here? We had a sigh. We had a [sigh]. Okay. AUDIENCE MEMBER: He has no system for the -- he has nothing but the verbal system and that's not accessible to him. He has no way of communicating. DEBORAH TAUB: Okay, so he has nothing but a verbal system and if that's not accessible to him, how is he going to communicate this? So clearly, there's a glitch. Yes? AUDIENCE MEMBER: I didn't see instruction. 16

17 DEBORAH TAUB: And this was -- the statement is I didn't see any instruction. This was the assessment piece and that's why, so I think that's a very valid point, because one of the things that we do see sometimes happen is that people just go and assess the students and say, well, they couldn't do it. I'm done. Well, if you can't do it, we supposed to then instruct them. That's kind of our job as teachers. So that is a good point. I do want to say, on the plus side, kudos. I mean, Bruce is doing grade-level type work. He's working on means. He's working on temperatures. He's working on graphs. So we've got some positive things going on here too, but let's look at Bruce once Bruce had a communications system. Now University of Kentucky was doing this -- is doing this work, where they are working with several schools across the state to have an expert come in and they ask the schools to identify students who were pre-symbolic, who did not have a communication system and who the schools were very frustrated with and needed some help with. And Bruce was one of those students. And so this is what Bruce, after, I believe this was after two weeks of using this communication system. This is Bruce's experience. [VIDEO BEGINS] TEACHER: Are you ready to go? We're going to do weather Bruce, go to the weather. BRUCE: Weather. Weather. TEACHER: Okay, thank you. Now, we've been graphing, forecasted an actual high temperatures, we've collected our data for the forecasted temperatures and the actual 17

18 high temperatures, and now we're going to do some analysis, and we're going to use our graph to do that analysis. I'm going to ask you some questions. I want you to tell me the answers, okay? Look at this data point. Is this the forecasted temperature or the actual temperature? BRUCE: That is the forecasted temperature. TEACHER: Yes it is. We did our forecasted temperatures in black. Now, look at this data point. Is this the forecasted or the actual temperature? BRUCE: That is the actual recorded temperature. TEACHER: Very good. Now, let's take one day. Let's look at October 22 nd. Was the forecasted temperature -- listen to the question. Was the forecasted temperature higher or lower than the actual temperature? BRUCE: The forecasted temperature was higher than actual temperature. TEACHER: Yes it was. Very good. Now, let's look at October 23 rd. Was the forecasted temperature higher or lower than the actual temperature? BRUCE: The forecasted temperature was lower than the actual temperature. TEACHER: Very good. So, let's look at October 20 th. Were the forecasted and actual temperatures high, low, or about the same? BRUCE: The forecasted and the actual temperatures were the same. 18

19 TEACHER: Very good. Now, look at these forecasted temperatures. Okay, looking at them? How many days was the forecasted temperature higher than the actual temperature? BRUCE: Eight. TEACHER: Eight days. Very good. Good work, Bruce. Thank you for paying attention. [VIDEO ENDS] DEBORAH TAUB: So what do you see there? A little different? Yeah? What struck you about this? I find this very powerful, you know, I will say. Talk about seeing progress in a student. I find this very powerful, but that's just me. So what struck you guys about this? AUDIENCE MEMBER: How much does Bruce got in his head that nobody knew about? DEBORAH TAUB: How much does Bruce have in his head that nobody knew about? And I think that's an excellent question, because look at this, he's in high school. And clearly he's got number sense, he's able to count, he's got the concept of more and less, he's got equal, he's got dates. I mean, he has graph-reading skills, he's got all of these skills that up until they did this project, people were saying he was noncommutative. What else? AUDIENCE MEMBER: Opportunity and access. 19

20 DEBORAH TAUB: Opportunity and access. Yeah, yeah, I think that sums it up quite nicely. Opportunity and access. We need both in order for students to grow. AUDIENCE MEMBER: He couldn't get it out fast enough, you know. DEBORAH TAUB: So he couldn't -- Bruce couldn't get it out fast enough, and I think that's -- you know, I love his grin at the end. It was very much like ha-ha-ha, look what I can do. Yes. AUDIENCE MEMBER: The variety of skills he was able to demonstrate, I mean, you could kind of see the standard, you know, the standards kind of going through you know, the activities first with that one activity before. DEBORAH TAUB: So in the second one, we've got a variety of skills, we've got a variety of standards, whereas in the first activity, there's really just one thing he's working on and even that he's not able to demonstrate, not because he doesn't know it, clearly, but because he doesn't have the communication system to do that. AUDIENCE MEMBER: The engagement. DEBORAH TAUB: The engagement is very different in these two. In the first one, Bruce is getting kudos for paying attention. Remember that? Good job Bruce, I like how you're paying attention. And really, in the second one he's much more engaged. He's anticipating the answer, she has to remind him to slow down and listen to the question, you know, he's much more engaged. 20

21 AUDIENCE MEMBER: I was curious too, to see whether he needs some of the support she was giving, like the pointing to the forecast map. I'm curious, at the end when he could do the total number, it didn't appear that he needed those supports from the very beginning. DEBORAH TAUB: So the question is, you know, really, what supports are necessary for him, because in the second one, there were a lot more supports. She's pointing to each dot, she's showing him where it is on the graph, and yet, he's much more easily able to answer it and even, you know, I love that he can go through his ipad, or touchscreen and flip through the menus to find the one that he wants and then do eight. And there was from what we could see, no like, one, two, three, four, five, six, you know, all of that that goes on typically. So what supports does Bruce really need, really needs to be revised and reviewed after looking at this particular piece. Other? AUDIENCE MEMBER: I'm being a little negative here -- DEBORAH TAUB: Please do. AUDIENCE MEMBER: I want to know, why on earth he didn't have access to a communication system if that was all it took is using that. I mean, seriously, like what was the barrier? DEBORAH TAUB: Okay, so. And I think that's a good question. I think that's an important question, especially when we think about, you remember our three graphs from elementary, middle, and high school? What is the barrier that's keeping these kids from getting communication systems? And I think that there are several, and I think it's 21

22 different for each student. Don't want to share it on tape, so afterwards I ll tell you a different story, but I think that sometimes the barrier is what we've discussed before. There's this overwhelmed feeling from people who are in the classroom. There's a lack of training on specific skills that are needed. I think that there's also, I mean, think about -- we do this in general ed too, that self-fulfilling prophesy. We hear what the student's like from the teachers before, so we assume that's what the student's like. Well, I m getting this student and he's non-communicative. He doesn't communicate. He's pre-symbolic. Therefore, he's pre-symbolic. So I'm going to work on other things. Yes? AUDIENCE MEMBER: I think also a lot of teachers rely on their speech therapist to say, let's get them something, and if they don't for whatever reason, you know, whether it's monetary or they're not familiar with the AAC systems or whatever, or just the selffulfilling prophesy, teachers wait for related circumstances. DEBORAH TAUB: And I think that's a good point. What she was saying is that a lot of teachers depend on their speech-language pathologist and therapist to say, hey, why don't we try this? Or here's this device, or we need to get this device. And another thing that I've heard a lot is there are so many devices out there. And good grief. Trying to learn them all is just overwhelming. So I know, when I was teaching, in came our inclusion specialist, in came the inclusion specialist, she said, oh, you know, we have this grant and through this grant so-and-so is eligible for this communication device, so I got it for him. So here you go. 22

23 And I looked at it and I went, okay. And it was -- you know, I was truly overwhelmed. I had no idea what to do with it. And so I made the child carry it with him to every class, because what was I going to do? But I never sat down with him and said, oh, you know, this is how you use this, because nobody had ever sat down with me and said, this is how you use this. And so, you know, one of the things that I hear from teachers, depending on the state, depending on the county, is well, we have these devices, they're in a closet over there. We don't know what to do with them. And honestly, we don't know how to pair a student with a device, because there are certain steps to doing that. There's -- you know, this goes back to that research-based piece. It's not just, oh, this one looks cool. I'm going to get this one. It's, we need to really think about, what are the strengths of the student, what does the student need, what are the things that are going to work? Durability? Is this a student who's going to throw things? Well, if that's the case, I m probably going to be very careful about which one I get in terms of durability. Is it a student who has to carry everything with that student, so I don't want one too heavy? You know, so there's a lot of things that you have to consider, and that's again where as a teacher, I would really depend on my speech-language pathologist, my speech-language therapist to help me figure that out, because I did not get training in all of those pieces. There are places where you can go and get that information, but. AUDIENCE MEMBER: And I'm an SLP, so I feel like I can say this, and most SLPs don't get training in it either. DEBORAH TAUB: Okay, so most SLPs don't get training in that either? 23

24 AUDIENCE MEMBER: I mean, it is an elective course many times, so it's something that you have to pursue, but they also don't necessarily get a lot of pre-service training and pre-linguistic communication, and how to do that type of intervention. And a lot of these kids are in public schools right now, so they might have one of these kids come through their case load of 50, 60 kids once every two or three years, so it does become a -- DEBORAH TAUB: Absolutely. There's a training issue there. You know, you've got the speech-language pathologist who don't -- you know, I m just repeating for our lovely video tape, who don't necessarily get the training. It's an elective course, and then the number of students we see. I mean, we really are talking about a very small percentage of the population of students in public schools, so it's not something that you might necessarily see as the primary thing to go get your professional development in, because you've got all these other students too that you have to look for. AUDIENCE MEMBER: I also see isolation. Because there's only one or two kids that may come through. Those special ed teachers are basically this is your kid. And there's isolation. And you can't [inaudible] that everything. And so the idea is, unfortunately what happens is reactive, so when the parent is upset about what's going on, then all the sudden cavalry comes in, the team comes in, my goodness, we should have done this at the beginning. So I think we need to look at systems changing too, even though it's a small population of kids. DEBORAH TAUB: Right. Yeah. And the isolation piece is definitely key. And the other piece -- or another piece that we're going to talk about today is we're going to talk about, 24

25 you don't -- I don't expect anybody to be perfect at everything. So knowing where to pull your supports, knowing how to pull those supports, it's definitely, we've all had the experience where the squeaky wheel gets the grease, the parent who comes in and complains or you know, threatens a lawsuit or whatever is the one who ends up getting the pieces, and then the flip side of that is that sometimes you have parents, who, they aren't experts in everything either. So you know, one teacher was sharing with me that she has a student who almost every month has a new communication device because something new comes out and the parent says, oh, this one looks cool. Let's try this one. And goes and buys it for their child and then the schools you know, feels obligated to do something with it, and so finding that balance between who has the expertise and who has the skills to do this. AUDIENCE MEMBER: In Pennsylvania we have that system set up because through each of our IUS there's an assistive technology consultant. So I think it's not -- it shouldn't be on the teacher and it's not necessarily on the teacher, but the onus is on the LEAs to at least let the teachers know that that's -- that help is available through their SLP but also through the IU and the AT consultants that as a team, they say, let's look at the strengths and needs and what is the best device or whatever and include the parents in that. It's called a SETT meeting. DEBORAH TAUB: A SETT meeting. So having your assistive technology person who can come in and provide that guidance is very important, and making that known to people. And that's again where I think Pennsylvania has a benefit over some other states because they have you, they have technical trainers, they have these assistants 25

26 who come in and help and provide professional development, provide help, and not every state has that. So I know I ll go to meetings and somebody will say, oh, I have no idea what to do about such-and-such, and somebody else will say, you know, we have an assistance technology person. And about 50 people in the audience will all go, what? Who is that? Where is that? I know one state where they have a library of resources where you can go and check out assistive technology, you can check out lesson plans, you can check out manipulatives, all of these really cool things. And I m telling you, we were in a room of 200 teachers and I think maybe ten of them knew about it, so clearly - - AUDIENCE MEMBER: It's like that here. We have this huge system. Teachers [inaudible]. DEBORAH TAUB: Yeah, and some of it's just, you've got turnover, you've got things. It s constantly reeducating people. But even so, I mean, knowing that these are some of the things we need to do and think about. So I talked about how we were going to have a shared foundation today. Our shared foundation is going to be focusing really on this least dangerous assumption, which is that in the absence of conclusive data, educational decisions ought to be based on assumptions which, if incorrect, will have the least dangerous effect on the likelihood that students will be able to function independently as adults. Furthermore, we should assume that poor performance is due to instructional inadequacy, rather than to student deficits. It's a really scary statement to put out there. 26

27 And I ve had people come up and be very mad at me for putting it up there. But here's what I m going to say. I'm not saying in any way, shape, or form, that the people in this room, that the people in the state, the people in the schools, I m not a blame the teacher kind of person. What I m saying is let's look at the system. Let's look at you know, what are the pieces that need to be in place, the supports that need to be in place in order to help students achieve what they need to achieve? And I think that's very different from saying the instruction isn't there because the teachers are bad. It's the instruction isn't there because either we don't know enough about this population, we don't have the professional development, we don't have the tools, you know, whatever it is. But rather than assuming it's the student, let's look at all the other pieces that could -- that are playing a part here too. Yes? AUDIENCE MEMBER: I just have a statement or a question here. I wonder how much of the technology and the information are we putting on is shared -- like in the home, because I think that if parents were given what was being used in the schools, or not so much instruction, but how to use it or the simple whatever, and if that was shared and if parents were more of a team, you could work on it more in the home. I -- you know, or when they do their studies, do they -- and maybe if they got this equipment for a student when they were in elementary school, maybe your numbers into the secondary or into high school, would be a huge change. DEBORAH TAUB: And I think that's a very key piece. If you look at -- what she was saying was that how much of this communication is shared with home? And if you look at the associate and tell me when I'm wrong on this, the Association for Speech and 27

28 Hearing -- ASHA -- American Speech and Hearing Association. See, acronyms. Not my friend, I can tell you that right now. So ASHA has on their website, and they're really, for me they're the go-to people for communication stuff. But they have a kind of Bill of Communication Rights, and one of the parts of that bill is that any place a person is, they should have access to their communication system. That means home, that means the movies, that means school, that means church, that means any place that student goes. I mean, imagine if we walked into this room today, and I put duct tape over your mouth and said, okay. We're going to communicate now. Let's go. I want you guys to have small group discussions, I want you to work on lesson plans, I want you to do this. You can't take the duct tape off though. All right, get to work. Well, you guys would be able to find a way around it because you have multiple modes of communication. Some of you've got sign, you've got writing, we've got typing, we've got computers here. You would be able to find a way around it, but if you worked that hard to get one mode of communication and you leave the school and somebody takes it and says, see you later. All done. Bye. That's a problem. And again, it comes down to a lot of different factors, including some of it political and financial. I know with Bruce, unfortunately, he was 18 and his parents decided, and I can't say as I necessarily blame them on this one, that school was not the place for him, and so, rather than going till 21, he stopped at 18, and the school said, well, it's our communication system. So, they kept it. That being said, there are lots of resources out there to get communication systems that are specific for students. If you're interested in 28

29 that, I ll give you my . Michael McSheehan in New Hampshire, who is my guru on this, gave me a whole list of places you can go and get grants and other kinds of things to help build -- get communication systems. So, really, this should not be hopefully what's standing in the way of our students making progress. So yeah. Okay. I'm going to do I think two more slides and then, if it's okay, we're going to take a break. Is that okay? I'm chained here. You know, I m not allowed to leave. So looking at all this data, thinking about all of our students, I just kind of wanted to give the bigger picture of where we are right now for people with disabilities. And this is from the 2009 American Community Survey done by the government, the census. So, what I did was I tried to compare people with a disability to people without a disability. So people with a disability, 21% are living below poverty level, versus 11% living below poverty level. And that's just looking at students who -- or people who are over 16. So that's not including children under 16. Across the US, across all disabilities, yes, all disabilities. So this is not specific to significant, this is across the board. My next slide will be specific to significant. Seventy-two percent of people with disabilities are not in the labor force. Again, looking at 16 plus, so I m willing to give them a little leeway for that 16 to 18, because, you know, not everybody has a job at 16 to 18, but even so, compare that to 27% of people without a -- who do not have a disability, who are not in the labor force. Twenty-eight percent have less than a high school graduate education. And this is looking at people over the age of 25, so 25 plus, versus 12% with less than a high school graduation. So not the greatest statistics for overall outcomes and looks. Now, looking specifically at students with the most 29

30 significant cognitive disabilities, and you'll see right here, it's a NAAC slide. I try to give credit where credit is due. SHARON: Explain what NAAC is, because some people don't know. DEBORAH TAUB: Oh, I m sorry. National Alternate Assessment Center was a grant from the government that brought together I think, seven different agencies to work on developing the most up-to-date information on the cognition and assessment of students with significant cognitive disabilities. So it included for instance, the University of Kentucky, the National Education Outcome Center, and several other organizations that I can't think of right now because there's too many acronyms in my head. And what they've done is they've got -- if you go to their website, they have resources for parents, resources for teachers, resources for professional development people, and they've really covered kind of the gamut of really nice things. They are the ones who developed the learning characteristic inventory. They've done some research then based on that. They have some interesting PowerPoints and professional development slides and presentations on aligning grade-level curriculum, on how to think about this population. They also have some more kind of test-focused things, such as how to determine if a test is valid and how to look at assessments, especially largescale assessments are really their forte. And now, what they've done is, their grant ended I believe last year or the year before, and with the new NCSC grant, that's actually a lot of the players who were with the NAAC consortium are now part of the NCSC grant with some additional players 30

31 added in, so it's still ongoing work and you'll see when you look at their website that there's even new things that have been added just in the past couple of months. Their website is so. Oh, thank you. So, looking at the students with most significant cognitive disabilities, these students are the least likely to graduate with a high school diploma. Also the least likely to remain employed, according to post-graduation surveys. So even if they get a job, keeping that job is not having such great outcomes right now. They're leaving high school unable to read beyond sight words or do math beyond using a calculator. And leaving the school without the means to communicate essential intents. And we think about that, and you think about how terrifying that is to go out in the world and not be able to say even the most basic thing, like, I am being hurt right now. So, clearly, some steps need to be taken, some things need to be done. But, on the other hand, we've made a lot of progress and we can see that there are ways to address some of these concerns. And I know we've talked a lot about communication so far today, and the rest of the presentation is not going to focus as much on communication, but I just wanted to set the stage for kind of where we are in the field right now, where we are with these students, and who it is we were really talking about. So, what I want to do is I want to take ten -- what have you been doing for break? Fifteen minutes? So take SHARON: There's snacks out there. 31