Re: Left Behind by 'No Child'

[Guest guest]

Left Behind by 'No Child'

www.heraldtribune.com/article/20071125/NEWS/711250439/-1/newssitemap

Most children their age will spend the year learning how to divide

numbers and how to read and understand complex writing.

Eash's lessons will be far simpler.

Her curriculum calls for classes on tying shoes and washing dishes.

Eash's students are part of the small group of children who fall

outside the safety net of No Child Left Behind, the federal government's

push to ensure that all students are learning.

The tough law makes few exceptions.

Eash's classroom is full of them.

No one will come to her class to prepare her students for the Florida

Comprehensive Assessment Test. They do not have to take it.

As a result, money, resources and attention have been siphoned away

and redirected to students who struggle to read and do basic math --

children whose test scores will be counted.

The progress of Eash's students can be measured, but only in basic

units that most people take for granted.

How many words can they speak?

Can they count change at the grocery store?

How long can they hold a pencil?

The last bus slows to a stop, and Eash steps to the curb as a

wheelchair ramp slowly grinds down to meet the pavement.

The first child to get off walks up to Eash and punches her in the

stomach.

The year has started.

Eash leads her students into the musty corridor of a building tucked

away on the back corner of the Orange Ridge-Bullock Elementary School

campus.

The walls are faded with time, the carpet matted by the thousands of

feet that have trampled it.

The Manatee County School District erected this building two decades

ago as the Bullock School, a place for severely disabled students who were

historically sent to institutions.

Bullock shared a campus with Orange Ridge, a school that culled

students from bustling middle-class neighborhoods carved from orange groves

in the 1950s. The two Bradenton schools eventually merged, but today most

handicapped students still go to class in the old Bullock building.

Time has changed the school and the surrounding community.

Homes once well cared for have fallen into disrepair. Crime rates are

among the worst in the county. It is ground zero for some of Manatee's worst

gang activity; the sound of gunshots is common.

More than 90 percent of the students at Orange Ridge qualify for a

free or reduced-price lunch because of their families' incomes. About one in

five is still learning to speak English.

Eash's students are no different, a fact that compounds their

disabilities and can make it more challenging to teach them.

On the first day of school, the students follow Eash out of the dim

hallway into her classroom, where classical music and the sweet smell of

cinnamon greet them.

Letters, street signs and a large calendar cover a bulletin board that

stretches across the side wall -- decorations more familiar to

kindergartners than to 8-, 9- and 10-year-olds.

There is a kitchen where Eash's students will learn to wash dishes and

measure liquids. Across the room, she will teach them to make a bed and

vacuum.

The students settle into their chairs and Eash hands each of them a

thin spiral-bound notebook they will use for handwriting. For most of them,

that will mean learning to print the letters of the alphabet.

The teacher then gives them each a label and asks them to put it on

the notebook's cover. But even this simple task is a challenge. Some of the

students cannot peel the paper off the back. They struggle, and some stop

trying altogether.

" I can't do this, " wails Markcus Scofield, a fourth-grade boy whose

autism makes it difficult for him to focus.

" Where's the white? " grumbles another student, Gibson, a

fourth-grader who has emotional problems.

One fifth-grader, Natiya , who has mental retardation, beams as

she eventually peels off the paper.

" Miss Lynne, " the girl says in slurred speech, " I did it. "

The label exercise takes about 10 minutes.

Eash tries to move on to the classroom rules, but her students start

talking excitedly and do not pay attention. She sighs, running her fingers

through her hair. A new student who was not registered shows up for class.

Time passes as Eash tries to get the new child settled.

After about an hour it is time to get the students ready to go to

music class.

They line up at the door, but Eash lingers behind, staring at the

calendar.

" I'll make it, " she says.

Eash, 39, knew special education would be tough when she took her

first job working with disabled children in a Pennsylvania classroom more

than a decade ago.

The child of one of her cousins has cerebral palsy, and she saw

firsthand how the child struggled with basic tasks such as speaking and

walking.

Witnessing the challenges the child faced growing up, Eash decided to

do something to make life more manageable for children with disabilities.

She went into teaching.

Despite her family experience, her first year brought plenty of

surprises.

Students came to her with a range of problems, and she quickly learned

how their disabilities affected her ability to teach them.

Teaching materials and curricula were hard to come by, and Eash found

she often had to come up with her own lesson plans and assessments.

Even today, many public schools are just now adopting consistent

special education curricula.

The 2006-07 school year brought the first specific standards for what

skills students with mental disabilities in Florida should be learning,

rather than vague guidelines for teachers to follow.

" You always hear the burnout rate is three to five years, " Eash says.

" You find out why that first year. "

A few years ago, Eash returned to Sarasota, her hometown, to be closer

to family.

When she started at Orange Ridge, she encountered an entirely new

layer of complications.

Some of her students come from homes where family members have drug

and alcohol problems. Others live in neighborhoods riddled with crime and

gang violence.

Her students sometimes come to school hungry, tired and neglected. In

many cases, she never meets their parents.

It took time to adjust to her new circumstances, and the years have

brought plenty of frustration.

Not long into the new school year, Eash can see it will be no

different.

NOTE: This is an excerpt of the first part in four part series by the

Sarasota Herald Tribute. Read more:

www.heraldtribune.com/article/20071125/NEWS/711250439/-1/newssitemap

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