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Press Release
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Kalam favours use of ICT in education
programmes
New Delhi, April 5 (PTI): President A P J Abdul Kalam on Monday said information and communication technology can be an important tool for mission-mode programme like Sarva Siksha Abhiyan to reach all the six lakh villages in the country.
Addressing Microsoft Academic Summit here, he said like Savra Siksha Abhiyan for elementary education, a programme should also be evolved for secondary education and ICT can be an important tool in this regard.
Narrating his experience of addressing students in five locations in Punjab at the same time, Kalam said Tele-education Delivery System could be an effective way to reach students in different locatio ns.
"The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) has undertaken to establish connectivity through EDUSAT for hundred centres across the country. I am going to take classes for IGNOU students on different subjects. The delivery of my online interaction to hundred centres will take place through universal tele-education model," he said.
The President favoured bringing down the cost of higher education through competition.
He said existing universities should be allowed to set their own levels of education keeping in view the quality of education imparted.
Kalam said college education system should orient students towards entrepreneurship.
He told the participants in the summit to create unique models for improving the quality of education and implement it specially in rural areas.
He said language neutral software and content should be created and IT companies should become partners to teacher training programmes.
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Big Education Changes Coming
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Revised law will affect special-needs students
Louie Villalobos
The Arizona Republic
Apr. 28, 2005 12:00 AM
Revisions to a federal law will bring sweeping changes to special-education programs across the country beginning in July.
Some parents and teachers are concerned that the change will allow special-education students to be expelled for disciplinary problems, fail classes because their educational needs won't be met, and leave them unprepared for life after graduation.
The law, a reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act, specifically will affect the way parents monitor the progress of their child, how schools handle discipline, how students are instructed, how special-needs children in private schools receive services and how state education officials oversee it all.
The scope of the rules is so far-reaching that the Arizona Department of Education has scheduled a statewide teleconference in May with special-education directors across the state and is working to hold informational sessions for the community. Arizona has more than 118,000 special-education students.
Although the provisions become law July 1, states will have to wait several months before the federal government hands down regulations implementing them.
"We're running as fast as we can," said Joanne Phillips, who oversees the exceptional-student services program for the State Department of Education.
The 30-year-old disabilities act was reauthorized by President Bush in December. Because all states accept federal disabilities money, they must adhere to regulations when using those funds. Arizona received $152 million in IDEA grants this year. Nationally, the federal government handed out more than $10.5 billion for special education this school year.
The biggest adjustment for parents of a special-education student is in the development of the child's Individual Education Plan, the document schools and parents create to lay out the educational goals for the student.
In an effort to reduce paperwork, the new provisions will no longer require IEPs to include short-term goals, except for students with severe cognitive disabilities. That means parents won't have a tangible way to measure their child's progress for the year, said Beth Smith, whose 17-year-old son has cerebral palsy.
Parents generally look for the short-terms goals as a way to make sure their child is on track to meet bigger goals for the year. For Smith, that means making sure Michael meets his goal of writing an essay with three supportive arguments if he is to meet his year-end goal of passing English III.
"I can look at the IEP and see if he is where he needs to be," she said.
Phillips said that while districts and parents can choose to continue including short-terms goals in the IEP if they find them helpful, the main goal should be to make sure the plan is aligned with state standards. Paula Banahan, whose daughter has Down syndrome, said parents will demand a way to keep up with their child's progress, even if it's through quarterly updates from teachers.
"How do we get there?" asked Banahan, whose daughter, Julia, is a freshman at Shadow Mountain High School. "Where is our road map?"
How schools and parents work to implement the IEP without the short-term goals will determine if it was worth cutting down the paperwork, Phillips and the parents said.
Another provision likely to be of concern to parents is stricter disciplinary guidelines for special-education students. Previous versions of the disabilities law made it easier for parents to attribute a child's disruptive behavior to the disability. Now it will easier for schools to show a disconnect between the actions of special-needs students and the disability, said Jerri Katzerman, managing attorney for the Arizona Center for Disability Law.
The burden of proof may fall on parents during disciplinary hearings, where schools are generally quicker than parents to label the behavior as separate from the disability, she said.
It's the type of change that Katzerman said parents need to know about when it comes time to question a school's decision. Her organization helps parents with school-related disputes.
"This is a significant reversal of current law," she said. "It will be much easier for an administrator to get rid of a perceived problem."
Banahan said parents will want school employees to be better educated on how each disability affects student behavior, especially if the changes make it easier for students to be removed from "regular" classrooms. Her daughter, for example, tells teachers she is too busy to do homework when she doesn't understand how to do it.
One of the most surprising changes has to do with when schools help special-education students transition into adulthood. Schools will now be asked to begin preparing students for life after school at age 16, two years later than current requirements.
Phillips said that provision was so unexpected that many in the special-education community double-checked to make sure it wasn't a typographical error. Her concern is that special-education students, who need the most help with the transition, will lose two years of services.
"It distresses me," said Phillips, who reminded parents that they can still request transition services begin at 14.
Parents need to plan for life after school as soon as possible to account for everything that child will need, Smith said. Questions about college scholarships, jobs or life services available to special-needs children don't wait until the student is 16, she said.
"I starting asking when Michael was in the 10th grade," she said. "We need to start working on this stuff."
The biggest impact of the provisions will be felt in the budgets of school districts. Special-education teachers will be required to be highly qualified under the law's new provisions. It's a requirement meant to align special education with the federal No Child Left Behind law that already mandates that "regular" classroom teachers be highly qualified.
A more plausible solution, Phillips said, would be to use two teachers in special-education classrooms. A biology teacher, for example, could be asked to spend a period in a special-education teacher's room.
School districts also could be heavily affected by how the law will change special-need services in private schools. Current rules ask the district in which the parent resides to provide services for the child who attends a private school, regardless of where the private school is located.
The change would require the district to pay for the services offered to all special-needs children in private schools within its boundaries. It's still unclear how the funding will work.
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A Mother To a Teacher
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The following letter appeared as an article in the Northian Newsletter. It is by the mother of an Indian child, in form of an open letter to her son's teacher.
Before you take charge of the classroom that contains my child, please ask yourself why you are going to teach Indian children? What are your expectations? What rewards do you anticipate? What ego-needs will our children have to meet?
What values, class prejudices and moral principles do you take for granted as universal? Please remember that "different from" is not the same as "worse than" or "better than", and that yardstick that you use to measure your own life may not be appropriate for their lives.
The term "culturally deprived" was invented by well meaning middle-class whites to describe something they could not understand.
Too many teachers, unfortunately, seem to see their role as rescuer. My child does not need to be rescued; he does not consider being Indian a misfortune. He has a culture, probably older than yours; he has meaningful values and a rich experiential background. However strange or incomprehensible it may seem to you, you have no right to do or say anything that implies to him that it is less than satisfactory.
Our children's experiences have been different from those of the "typical" white middle-class child for whom most school curricula seem to have been designed (I suspect that this "typical" child does not exist except in the minds of curriculum writers). Nonetheless, my child's experiences have been as intense and meaningful to him as any child's.
Like most Indian children his age, he is competent. He can dress himself, prepare a meal for himself, clean up afterwards, care for a younger child. He knows his Reserve, all of which is his home, like the back of his hand.
He is not accustomed to having to ask permission to do the ordinary things that are part of normal living. He is seldom forbidden to do anything; more usually the consequences of an action are explained to him and he is allowed to decide for himself whether or not to act. His entire existence since he has been old enough to see and hear has been an experiential learning situation, arranged to provide him with the opportunity to develop his skills and confidence in his own capacities. Didactic teaching will be an alien experience to him.
He is not self-conscious in the way many children are. Nobody has ever told him his efforts towards independence are cute. He is a young human being energetically doing his job, which is to get on with the process of learning to function as an adult human being. He will respect you as a person, but he will expect you to do likewise to him.
He has been taught, by percept, that courtesy is an essential part of human conduct and rudeness is any action that makes another person feel stupid or foolish. Do not mistake his patient courtesy for indifference or passivity.
He doesn't speak standard English, but he is no way "linguistically handicapped". If you will take the time and courtesy to listen and observe carefully, you will see that he and the other Indian children communicate very well among themselves and with other Indians. They speak "functional" English, very effectively augmented by their fluency in the silent language, the subtle, unspoken communication of facial expression, gestures, body movement and the use of personal space.
You will be well advised to remember that our children are skillful interpreters of the silent language. They will know your feelings and attitudes with unerring precision, no matter how carefully you arrange your smile or modulate your voice. They will learn in your classroom, because children learn voluntarily. What they learn will depend on you.
Will you help my child to learn to read; or will you teach him that he has a reading problem? Will you help him develop problem solving skills; or will you teach him that school is where you try to guess what answer the teacher wants?
Will he learn that his sense of his own value and dignity is valid or will he learn that he must forever be apologetic and "trying harder" because he isn't white? Can you help him acquire the intellectual skills he needs without, at the same time, imposing your values on top of those he already has?
Respect my child. He is a person. He has a right to be himself.
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