What do you think about the amount of money being spent on special education? (Read the news on this topic here.) What can be done to make special ed more efficient?

how is it dead poncho? people are still discussing it. if you dont care about the topic then dont post here.

This thread is dead.
Let it die.
Or you will join it.

I totally agree with everyone's points about gifted students not being challenged enough. I'm currently trying to get my school to provide a more comprehensive curriculum in science so that all students, average, gifted, special ed can excell and improve in the area. My brother is a special ed student and I have always been placed in gifted courses (on the rare occation when they're available) so I've really seen how this effects both sides. One really sad thing is that special education teachers tend to be paid less than regular teachers, that makes absolutely no sense to me. My brother is so frustrated with school, it's extremely disheartening to watch him struggle. Then again when I was his age I became very bored with school and really stopped caring.

I think that the way classes are structured are the biggest problem here. I go to a small, poor school without the budget or personelle for many advanced and special ed courses. What I am trying to convince everyone here of is that if you taught students the basics at an earlier age. If you showed them how to learn and understand something from the start instead of craming the same facts into their head year after year, you would be able to have more open ended courses in high school. English tends to be structured this way: by the time you get to high school you are able to explore its applications (same with math usually) Science should be taught the same way so that gifted students could explore complex ideas in science and special ed students could spend all the time they needed on learning the basic facts.

In our school, there's not enough. A special ed teacher called a speech-language-pathologist is replaced each year for less and less. They can't keep the one they have, it must get too expensive. They can't keep her every day because they have to share her with another school. Plus, they kick the SLP out of her room. There are more sped students, but their room size has been literally cut in half. The only good thing is that gifted is getting plenty. They are doing great and send kids over to the high school for classes. The "resource" teachers are doing fine also (with what they have). You can hear the teachers talking about how they end up spending their money on school stuff.

Nothing. We can do nothing. Lol just joking. I really am bad at this. Have fundraisers.. kids should stick up for them not make fun of them.

yup that's an excellent point

I know that in high school they have advanced classes but in middle school and elementry you always feel bored and annoyed if you already know everything being taught. I feel bad for the students who are behind because they have learning disabilities because they can't help it, but schools need to realize you can't really help being smart either. What happens when everybody is grouped in a system that is focused on teaching average kids? The fact is that you may be advanced but fall back into the average group because you are either being taught things that you already know, or things you would have known if you had advanced classes. I think that less people fit into the average student catagory, and teachers need to teach depending on the needs of students, because then everybody would learn better.

Oh my god Vicki i love you!!!! What you said is so accurate that i don't even know where to begin. The Gifted students i find are not challenged enough creating nothin but boredom. Leaving no motivation what so ever, that's sad!

it's really tough for the schools to get more money out of the gov. for special ed and gifted students, and that's wrong.

I think it's true that attention should be given to "special ed" students (i.e. with disabilities), but how many people consider the other kind of special ed - the gifted students? Much of the time at school gifted students are ignored because they don't need any help with their work, and many turn to tuning out in class because of simple boredom, of lack of sufficient challenge. Also, these students sometimes resort to doing the teacher's job, helping other students. I personally think this is unfair to these gifted students because they too are at school to learn and be challenged.