Country Comparison

6/28/13                                   

This week I found learning about education in the other countries interesting. I enjoyed listening to Jane speak about Tiwain education. It’s interesting that we compare our students to other countries’ education systems, but when you listen to people, like Jane, and are able to hear the pros and cons of their education system it makes me realize how well we have it. When Jane spoke about the principals and the luxuries they have (AC, couch, living area, bathroom) and that their office was bigger than the classrooms, I was shocked. Their principals spend most of their time in their office and they can be principal for only 8 years in one school. At my school my principal is very involved and supportive. We have a lot of collaboration and professional development. I realize not all schools are like that, so I definitely feel very fortune.

Something I took from this week, that isn’t necessarily something I can fully change myself, but that I wish our school system was a little more like, would be the special services. Finland interrupts as soon as possible when they see a problem or gap in a students’ education. We do too, but in a different way. I like how their heaviest special education population is in grades 1-3. Most times our students are too young to qualify because our system says that kids at that age are still developing at different rates, so they don’t want to say they should be in special education because we don’t know if that will be the case by the time they are in 3^rd or 4^th grade. Then when the student gets to 3^rd grade and they are still struggling we start the process all over again. Then we have already lost about 2 years of services that could have been provided. In our education system RTI has good things to it, but there are definitely some holes. We have three 1^st grade teachers in my school and they usually have many referrals that they bring to our SAT team, (Student Assistant Team) which I’m a part of. So we put interventions in place for 8-10 weeks and at the end of 10 weeks we see if they are making adequate gains. If they are making the gains then we keep the intervention in place, but if they are not then we change the intervention and do another 8-10 weeks of intervention(s) and progress monitoring. It is a very frustrating process for them because they are only one teacher and they are trying to implement interventions for these students and teach the regular curriculum. As a special education staff we try and give support whenever we can, but there is still not enough support to help with those students whom are struggling in the regular classroom, but don’t qualify for special services. We aren’t a Title school either. Education can be great, but can be so frustrating. Lets just do what is best for kids, it doesn’t seem like it should be this complicated. J