The Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) will be voting at its March meeting to abolish specialized certification for special-education teachers. This would require special-education teachers to be trained to teach all of the following: students with mental retardation, behavioral disorders, learning disabilities, physical disabilities, other health impairments, autism and traumatic brain injury. Last December, the same proposal was presented by the ISBE staff. The board refused to approve the proposal because of the number of objections presented by parents and professionals. ISBE formally voted to “direct the state superintendent to meet with key stakeholders and . . . experts, and to . . . evaluate the . . . options that have been suggested during the public comment period.”
Supt. Glenn “Max” McGee selected a group of people to serve on this Blue Ribbon Committee, which met Feb. 14 and 15. Conspicuously uninvited were representatives of the Learning Disabilities Association of Illinois (LDA). Because learning disabilities is the single most prevalent disability group in the state of Illinois, the intended slight was significant. In the past year members of this organization testified at public forums advocating the need to maintain categorical certification.
Currently special-education teachers are certified to teach students with a specific disability. Teachers are trained to meet the specific needs of students. They are required by law to provide specialized instruction based on individual needs. The new proposal would create jacks-of-all-trades and masters of none.
Other groups, such as the Illinois Education Association and The Illinois Council For Exceptional Children, have joined the LDA in their objections to non-categorical certification. Special educators across the country who deal with similar issues contend that it is impossible for one individual to learn all he or she needs to know about and treat all those categories and do it well. Children will be cheated out of quality education if their teachers are not specialists.
Another concern is that the colleges and universities would have to water down curriculum in order to train teachers who could accommodate the demands of multicategorical models of teaching.
All in all, non-categorical certification would take away the “special” in special education and create generalists who know a little bit about a lot of things and not enough of one thing. Parents of children with disabilities have objected to this generalization.
McGee’s Blue Ribbon Committee concluded two days of meetings with little change to their preconceived notion that non-categorical certification is the way to go. Members of the group claimed erroneously that it was necessary because of the recent settlement in the Corey H. lawsuit. This is a suit nicknamed for a Chicago child whose family fought his placement in a special-education classroom. The actual settlement agreement, however, states “teachers of other disability labels [other than deaf or blind] may be certified by disability label, if the ISBE concludes, after soliciting comments from all parties and seeking the advice of experts if necessary, that the need for the certification category by disability label is justified.”
Students with learning disabilities deserve the most appropriate education possible, and this will only happen if teachers can continue to be specialists. For more information, call LDA/IL at 708-430-7532.
