JUNE 2010
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EDUCATION UPDATE
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SPECIAL EDUCATION
mistake. “They don’t differentiate the instruction enough between groups,” he says. Of course, providing teachers with tools via ongoing professional development and hiring enough support staff is paramount to success. In turn, principals must make walkthroughs the norm to keep the process from stagnating with ongoing feedback and decision-making initiatives among staff. Looping into the stream of information, leadership must be on top of making sure assessment data continues to flow for students. Who’s
making adequate progress? What are individual strengths and weaknesses, and when are students ready to move forward? As such, he says, efforts must be refocused on an ongoing basis. And intervention usually needs to be staggered. “The further a student is behind, the more resource-allocation it takes to get them back up to speed.” At Kennewick, some students receive upwards of 210 minutes of reading instruction per day. In the end, the school came in with a 99 percent proficiency rating one year and have remained in the high 90s since. The time certainly comes at the expense of other things, but Dr. Torgesen believes the time allotted is worth the cost. In the F.C.R.R. document “Teaching All Students to Read in Elementary School: A Guide for Principals,” Kennewick officials put it succinctly: “It matters little what else they learn in elementary school if they do not learn to read at grade level.” Dr. John Russell, who as head of the Windward School has overseen 20 years of similar success with Dr. Torgesen’s strategies, expanded on Kennewick’s conclusions. Facing an almost insurmountable challenge, middle- and highschool students lose access to the rest of the curriculum without adequate ability to read. In turn, he concludes, they are much more likely to have both academic and behavioral issues, and that gap never goes away. #
diagnosis that has considerable stability over time and reduced wiggle room for careless use in general medical and educational settings); 2) the need to educate doctors, psychologists, educators, families and patients that not all eccentricity is mental disorder; 3) the need to educate the public and the press that diagnostic habits and systems change far faster than people do; and 4) getting past the ridiculous idea that this has anything to do with vaccination. The way to avoid definitional “epidemics”
is to be cautious in changing definitions. The way to avoid panics about them is to be mindful that labels can be misunderstood and can be misleading. # Dr. Allen Frances is professor emeritus at Duke University, where he was previously chair of its department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. He was also chair of the DSM-IV Task Force and principle investigator on the DSM-IV Field Trials and has written a number of commentaries on DSM-5.
THE WINDWARD SCHOOL
THE IMPORTANCE By RICH MONETTI
OF
READING
Dr. Joseph K. Torgesen of the Florida Center for Reading Research recently presented “Teaching all Students to Read — Is it Really Possible?” at the Windward School in White Plains, N.Y. Since, according to National Assessment of Educational Progress results, 33 percent of all American children fail to achieve basic reading standards by third grade, it’s a crucial question. Before an audience of about 100 educators, Dr. Torgesen outlined an overall strategy and presented results to back up the claims. “When you learn to read, it changes your life and opens the world to you on numerous avenues,” he says. On the other hand, an early gap in reading grows proportionally over time and puts students at a disadvantage to learn in all other areas. Nature-wise, he says, some students lack certain inherent abilities to master comprehension, while the nurture aspect may diminish a child’s vocabulary upon entering kindergarten due to a family’s economic condition. Either way, Dr. Torgesen suggested the main obstacle emerges from the diverse range of ability contained within
classrooms. Most schools haven’t figured out how to organize classrooms to meet individual needs, he says. Putting the primary responsibility on the principal is the place to start, according to Dr. Torgesen. In the lead, the principal must effectively provide the tools to identify struggling readers and help teachers move forward with targeted intervention strategies. One such principal, David Montague of Kennewick Elementary School in Washington state, was presented with the challenge of upping his school’s 57 percent third-grade proficiency rate to the 90 percent range. Given the skills students had coming in, he thought the school board was crazy, according to Dr. Torgesen. Upping their efforts in a labor-intensive manner, the school was able to bump up their score by 15 points. But simple hard work was not enough to climb any higher over the next few years. For one thing, no matter where change is being attempted, the identification and interventions need to begin in kindergarten. Otherwise, once students are broken down by ability, teachers can make a crucial
Student Suicides
DSM-5
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continued from page 12
aspiring counselors the importance of self-care. They also urge practicing school counselors to develop their own supports in order to manage their own grief and stress as a matter of ethical and professional responsibility. Moreover, Everall notes that current counselors need to see their own recovery and self-care as vital, not only for themselves, but also for the students and their entire community. #
subject to different plausible interpretations. The stigma question cuts both ways. The services issues will have to be dealt with whether there is one diagnosis or two. As I see it, there are four real issues that cut below the controversies: 1) the importance of reducing false positive diagnosis by refining the criteria sets and raising the threshold requirements (at a minimum, the goal should be a
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Dr. Joseph K. Torgesen
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