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Providing Access to the Core Curriculum
 From the August 2002 Early Childhood newsletter.IDEA '97 requires school districts to provide access to the general curriculum to all students with disabilities. Not only must schools evaluate the students' educational progress, they must also align IEP goals to state curriculum standards. Doing this can be complicated, especially for states with a long list of standards for all academic and non-academic subjects. Where to Start Kathleen Jungjohann, the coordinator for elementary special education at the University of Oregon, advises educators first not to come up with IEP goals for every general curriculum standard but to "look at what a student needs to access the goals of a content area. You want the IEP to be something a student can achieve." One of the biggest challenges for IEP teams is what to do if a student functions several grade levels below his or her peers in a particular subject area. "What is your target?," Ms. Jungjohann recommends teams ask themselves. "Think about your goals [for a student]." Setting Curriculum Goals For example, a student may have goals in the area of teamwork and interaction with classmates. The student can work on these goals during a cooperative learning activity designed to meet a general curriculum standard for students without disabilities. In math class, another student can work on functional skills, such as counting, during an activity where his or her typical classmates are working toward other goals. Depending on each student's needs, goals for reading might include recognizing signs. Instead of writing a paragraph in language arts class, a student with disabilities could work on writing his or her name, if that is an IEP goal. Ms. Jungjohann reminds teachers that adaptations for students with disabilities do not need to change the content of what the students are learning. For example, if a student with fine motor problems has difficulty meeting his or her goal of writing, the student should be provided a word processor. The content of the lesson doesn't change. "Making adaptations doesn't affect access." Assessment "Make sure you measure progress frequently. Your assessment method has to be sensitive to growth," Ms. Jungjohann advises. For example, a reading assessment can measure how many sounds a student has learned over a period of time or how many words a student can read. Ms. Jungjohann reminds teachers to "evaluate a student's progress and not their disability. Make sure the measurement is in a format the student is familiar with." Teachers should also be careful not to change "the construct of what is being taught." For example, reading questions to a student is a reasonable modification for a math skills assessment, but should not be used to when assessing a student's reading skills.
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