The learning-disabled students in Room 205 of Yale Elementary School have spent the entire year with partially trained teachers, substitutes and aides.
Chaos reigned in the South Side classroom for much of the time, parents maintain, hitting a low point in January when a classroom aide fell asleep while 5th and 6th graders watched a movie. Without supervision, two 10-year-olds crawled under a table and engaged in oral sex, according to Chicago Public Schools officials, resulting in suspensions or reprimands for two faculty members and the principal.
While the incident at Yale, 7025 S. Princeton Ave., may be extreme, a rapidly worsening shortage of special-education teachers has left Chicago and much of the nation scrambling to provide an adequate education, or even classroom coverage, for some of the system’s neediest children.
Nearly 40 percent of Chicago’s 3,930 special-education teachers lack full certification for work with learning-disabled students, according to Illinois State Board of Education data obtained by the Tribune. About half of these 1,540 teachers have some training in special education — two to four college courses. The rest are substitutes, lacking any instruction for work with learning-disabled students.
While the training gap widens, the number of students labeled as learning-disabled is soaring, multiplying the problem.
Researchers say the quality of a teacher is the biggest predictor of student performance, and nowhere is that more vital than in a special-education classroom, where federal law requires that learning-disabled students receive individual instruction.
“The heart of special education is based on the individual needs of a child, and putting someone in a classroom with little or no training makes a mockery of it,” said Bev Johns, president of the Learning Disabilities Association of Illinois, an organization of parents and teachers. “In a special-education classroom, you need someone who is well-versed in various disabilities, someone who knows about the development and learning styles of students with disabilities. Without [that training], the child suffers and you cannot recapture what is lost in terms of learning.”
Unqualified substitutes
Parents of students in Room 205 agree. They complain the substitute teachers did not know how to inspire disabled students. One parent said her daughter complained that teachers gave up on lesson plans and simply let students work at their desks or watch movies.
Sheila Aiken said her 10-year-old son began the school year reading at a 1st-grade level but regressed quickly. She said she begged school officials to transfer him to another school. When they would not, she yanked him out and began home-schooling.
“No parent should have to put up with this,” Aiken said. “It’s criminal what they were doing to my son.”
Chicago Public Schools officials do not dispute the State Board of Education figures. But they argue that, given the critical shortage of trained special-education professionals, they are filling classrooms with the best available personnel.
“We have to deal with reality, not fantasy. And the reality is these people [certified special-education teachers] don’t exist,” said Sue Gamm, who oversees special education for Chicago schools. “We don’t put substitute teachers in special-education classes by choice, but what’s the alternative? Should we tell our special-ed students to stay home?”
The dearth of special-education teachers has become a nationwide crisis, according to officials with the U.S. Department of Education.
About 12,000 special-education teaching positions were either vacant or filled by unqualified educators during the 2000 school year, according to the most recent data. Ninety-seven percent of school districts reported at least one vacancy, and districts, on average, had seven special-education openings, the data showed.
In Illinois, school districts reported 661 special-education jobs unfilled at the beginning of the school year, accounting for about 25 percent of all vacant positions. Due to high turnover, the Illinois Board of Education estimates the state will need 9,000 new special-education teachers by the end of 2005.
More students affected
Exacerbating the problem, the number of learning-disabled youngsters increased 17 percent from 1990 to 2000 across the country. Chicago saw an almost 20 percent increase from 1995 to the 2001 school year. Today there are about 57,000 Chicago students in special-education classes.
Some attribute the growth to a more sophisticated method of identifying students. Others say schools are too aggressive, incorrectly labeling spirited youngsters as disabled.
Learning-disabled students are either grouped in a classroom with similar youngsters for the full school day, or attend regular classes and are pulled out for special attention part of the day.
Richard Mainzer, with the Council for Exceptional Children, said the problem is not that fewer teachers are obtaining special-education certificates. Instead, they are fleeing the field twice as fast as regular classroom teachers, driven out by burdensome paperwork, a thicket of federal regulations, classrooms crowded with students with a range of disabilities and fear of lawsuits.
“Special-education teachers are working under conditions that make it frustrating and difficult to deliver effective services to students,” said Mainzer, whose group is the largest professional association in the country for special-education teachers. “They’ve got school administrators expecting five things, parents wanting three more, general-education teachers asking for four more and then the federal government demanding a host of things. It’s a recipe for high burnout.”
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One teacher on the city’s North Side said she asked to be reassigned to a regular classroom because she spent more time filling out paperwork and arguing with parents than teaching.
“I got into special education because I wanted to work with kids who have learning challenges. But the system has so many roadblocks, it just exhausted me,” said the 12-year teacher, who did not want her name to be used. “I felt bad leaving because I know there’s a huge shortage, but I had to get out just to stay sane.”
State officials have created an emergency waiver that allows licensed elementary and high school teachers to work with learning-disabled students after taking two college courses in special education. The state has handed out nearly 6,000 waivers in the last five years, 30 percent of them to Chicago.
Gamm of Chicago Public Schools argues that teachers working on state-issued waivers can be as good, or better, than teachers who majored in special education.
“There is no research to support that one is any less qualified than the other,” Gamm said. “I’ve seen special-education teachers with master’s degrees who don’t teach as well as those who have the emergency certifications.”
Remedies for shortage
Gamm said her office has taken other aggressive steps to remedy the shortage.
Last year the school board temporarily suspended the city’s teacher residency requirement for special-education teachers. It also has offered to pay tuition for certified teachers and substitutes who want to go back to school and obtain a special-education certificate.
Gamm said her office is working closely with teachers to make sure students are not being placed in special-education classes when it’s not warranted.
“I wish I was Merlin the magician and could wave my wand and create certified special-education teachers,” she said. “But since I cannot do that, we are doing what we can to get highly trained teachers into our special-education classrooms.”
But parents of disabled students, along with officials from the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, which has done extensive research on teacher certification, say Chicago Public Schools need to do more.
“If it were a priority, they would pay teachers more or spend more money trying to find special-education teachers in other states,” said Denise Dixon, president of ACORN. “These are the kids who need the most help, and these are the kids that are getting treated the worst. It’s like we’ve decided these kids aren’t worth the effort so we’re not going to bother finding them good teachers.”
Sheila Aiken’s son said the parade of adults in charge of the classroom at Yale Elementary — including, according to some accounts, a parent volunteer and an 18-year-old hall monitor — made it difficult for him to learn.
He said he spent most of his time playing with his Game Boy or flipping through his Lego catalog. Sometimes he laid down on the throw rug and slept the day away, he said.
“No one cared about helping me learn,” he said, in a slow and halting speech pattern. “I want to learn. I need someone to help me.”