"A -Count -Ability" and Services for the Students with Visual Impairments
The statement was printed toward the back of the journal and was a strong call to all of us who work in the field with low prevalence populations. The statement inferred that absent a more formalized method of verifying the effects (read as outcomes) of services we provide in schools, there will be another and unfortunately more powerful force guiding our work-the dollar.
Some time ago I read another captivating statement, and found good use for it when I was personally questioned about the efficacy of educational services for visually impaired students. This statement read : "many times the things that can be counted, don’t; and those that cannot be counted, do!" How true those words are when considering how our work is evaluated by others outside our field. That evaluation is done using a rather overly simplistic approach.
More to the point: take the costs (real or perceived) of the educational services and divide that figure by the present number of students on a caseload or in a special school for the blind. What is then so often reported is the per student cost when more correctly it should read the "per(ceived) student cost".
Why is this important? Lost in the math is something far more tangible, and clearly available for review--that being student success rates. Like it or not, someone will be ready to evaluate and make potentially dangerous decisions about what we do based on something that has little do with what WE DO!
We can begin by looking at assessment of current student abilities, and progress to follow up with students post secondary school graduation status. Both of these are verifiable and when done correctly, provide levels data that will be tough to refute. In a field as small as ours, we can and must rely on accurate data, not opinions or philosophies or "trends", or historical accounts of the many ways we had rationalized our existence in the past.
In terms of assessment of student abilities, we must look again at true abilities of students to participate in more standardized testing processes. Yes this statement alone will rankle some well entrenched thinking in our field, but the time has more than come to challenge the time worn tenet that "no blind child can take standardized tests". There are students who are now taking standardized tests, and doing well.
However, there must be a systemic acceptance of accountability at a level different than is currently apparent. I can remember hearing that statement as a budding graduate student and dutifully repeated it for a few years upon employment.
It suddenly dawned on me one day that in the particular state where I worked, the statewide achievement test initially measured "basic skills" in reading, math, and writing. If these students could not even master basic skills, who were we to graduate these youngsters and encourage them to go on to college, only to see them fail within the first year, if not the first semester! This will lead into the second component later in this offering.
All manner of excuses could be and were made, but when it came right to some basics, these students were functionally illiterate. This is no news for us today especially in light of the recent pushes toward literacy in print and/or Braille. However, reluctance or refusal to measure their "abilities" in an independent manner certainly did not allow us to give the student, and ourselves a more accurate picture of student abilities as well as what we had been doing in school. If we look at the "reluctance to test" issues, we should be able to see the flaws in our thinking.
First, not all "blind" students are blind, or Braille readers. The vast majority of students on our caseloads are students with low vision, and many of them with more than adequate vision to read print.
Second, not all blind students are congenitally blind, and so the premise that tests discriminate because of lack of visual experiences loses something. I was amazed at a school that exempted an 18 year old student who had just lost his vision as a result of complication of diabetes, stating that the test unfairly discriminated against him because of lack of previous visual experiences.
What had this student done for 17 years? To say that the student may need a temporary exemption due to lack of a functional reading medium would be far more accurate, however the time honored tenet was invoked. When given proper instruction, with allowable modifications as conditioned in the IEP, there are few if any reasons to categorically exempt all visually impaired students from testing.
There are now more students participating in standardized assessments than in the past, and this is good. With this testing information we have an independent assessment of student abilities compared with those with whom they will enter the classroom, or college or the workplace (note the change from "compared to sighted peers?").
When viewed from a larger perspective, once students leave school, they ARE in the bigger picture. In order to qualify these statements, let me offer that for a narrow subset of students, those who are congenitally blind (blind from birth) must have considerations when being tested, but again this group represents a rather small percentage of all the students on caseloads or in special schools.
And for even this small percentage of students who will be expected to participate fully in the general curriculum, we must be prepared at many stages to measure their abilities, and adjust instruction accordingly in order to assure their most effective inclusion and success in school. Our programs must be designed to offer more than exposure to specialized skills in one or two week blocks, more than "immersion" in minimal periods of time.
Who of us would try to teach or learn any lifelong skill in two weeks? We must recognize those programs having longitudinal data that validate success over time. Programs must be prepared to develop new approaches as student needs change. We can and must demand reasonable caseloads, as well as ensure the ease of transition to and from more intensive instructional arrangements when the time is needed.
Another area to review is the status of students who graduate from our schools- be that local districts or special schools for the visually impaired. If we do not know exactly what these students are doing (or not in some cases) how can we legitimately review our educational programs for improvement?
So often we hear that "over 70% " of visually impaired adults are unemployed or underemployed. Careful reading of that research tells us some things: not all those in the sample were visually impaired in school; not all those who have satisfactory skills choose to be employed for a variety of reasons out of the purview of schools; and many are elderly. But there are young people leaving schools without the basic skills in literacy, independent living, and work experience to begin to compete, and for this particular segment of the adult population, WE DO NEED TO KNOW.
From this data, we can review our instructional arrangements and programs, and develop better methods to assure that those individuals are prepared to the best of their ability and our ability! For many readers, this is not news. What is missing on the grandest scale possible is the action that will assure this level of unemployment does not continue. As stated above, there are programs that have documented, proven track records-we need to know these and use them.
So where does this leave us? Right now it puts us back to the "per(ceived) student costs" and the uses and misuses of that information. We read that per(ceived) costs of educating students in special schools ranges from $40,000 per year to well over $100,000. These numbers make special school administrators shudder-some from fear, others from intimate knowledge that these costs are grossly oversimplified, and inaccurate. And if teachers in local schools think that these errant formulas cannot or will not be applied to them, brace yourselves.
Reports recently circulating indicate that per(ceived) student costs in local school programs ranged between $7000 per student, to $20,000! This 300% increase reportedly even occurred within one year. By using oversimplified formulas it can be shown that a local school spends on the average from $215-635 per hour of instruction!! Talk about per(ceived) student cost!!!
We have situations now where local district decision makers believe it perfectly acceptable to provide a one on one "aide" to students, and make no excuses about "cost savings". Yes dollars are not spent now, but the cost is yet to come.
We must come to agreement that student performance, both during and post school years, is desirable, measurable, retrievable, and does verify that what we do. And in many acceptable ways it can be counted. With a more comprehensive acceptance of some new tenets, we can better support the work we do for those students for whom we all share responsibility.
