Preventative, not reactive - a closer look at alternative placements

When I originally applied for the Professional Development Leave in October 2008, I was of the belief Maui District needed additional alternative placements for special education students.  I was thinking of two groups – those who have been placed at HorizonsAcademy and our secondary aged students who have very low reading skills, are unmotivated and are behavior problems on campus.  Now, as a result of my professional development, I have been exposed to new information and reached new conclusions that have changed my opinion on the need and the appropriateness of alternative special education placements for these groups of students. 


Students who graduate from high school without successfully achieving a high school diploma and without having had access to general education curriculum are far less likely to secure life long meaningful work and or higher education post high school.   Hawaii in particular has very poor outcomes in post school transition.  Rather than removing students from the best environment in which to prepare them for a successful future, we should be researching, developing and implementing programs to prevent them from becoming school casualties who require alternative placements.

In reviewing data from the years that I was most closely involved with the students at the Puunene ILC and Horizons Academy, I see there are common issues for these students.  These are cultural difference, low reading ability, and behavior problems - mainly motivation and attention.   Unless programs to address these core problems are in place at all schools we will continue to have students needing alternate placements.

I have come to believe that removing problem students from a campus without providing interventions to support and prevent the development of such behaviors in the first place is not only wrong but is also non-compliant to IDEA.  It is like amputation of a limb due do a small cut being ignored, turning infectious, being ignored further or incorrectly treated and allowed to deteriorate until the only solution is cutting it away entirely.   What is needed is long term solutions with research based quality interventions for reading and behavior, means to support student engagement and cultural competence.

I reached these opinions not only through the transition and intervention research I reviewed, but also in reading two books on leadership and change:  “Switch – How to change things when change is hard” by Chris and Dan Heath and “Leadership and Self Deception – Getting out of the box” by The Arbinger Institute, and I became a reader of “Blog Maverick” by Mark Cuban, a leadership and business guru.   All three teach how crucial it is to have vision for a new product or new direction when your customers are limited to an older or even current vision.  Leadership is about being able to see the future and head for it when everyone around you is still in the present or the past.  Using a business model example, it is not asking what your customers what they want - for they are unable to envision your future offerings - but to vision it for yourself and provide it to them.  Using our own educational example, in October 2008 the principals of our secondary schools desperately wanted us to provide alternate placements; the focus of most of my early morning school meetings were on how to deal with disruptive students and their parents.  Leadership however, demands us to take a step back and look at how to be preventative rather than reactive and work to build the supportive intervention programs that can end the cry for alternative placements and move the schools into the 21^st century.

IDEA requires that all students with disabilities have access to the general curriculum and that targeted, consistent, research based interventions (academic – especially reading, assistive technology, behavioral interventions, and cultural awareness) are in place to support them.   We know that in most of our schools many of our students are remain in special education classes receiving instruction in a highly modified content which is a complete departure from the general curriculum. Some reasons for this is lack of meaningful alternatives, tradition and lack of support for inclusive placements.

Therefore, I changed the focus of the grants written during my professional development leave to be supportive of a preventative future focus rather than addressing an immediate crisis, to prevent the need for alternative placements rather than to ignore the symptoms and provide only amputation, and to reach greater compliance to the intention of IDEA law.  The focus of the grants are (1) Technology to Include All Children project to increase inclusion of special needs students in elementary schools, (2) Kuleana Connect Project to build engagement and support unmotivated learners in behavior an executive functioning and (3) the King Kekaulike Inclusion Achievement Project to include the first two along with an Inclusion Achievement Center approach to providing successful inclusion practices for all students.