The state impaneled a Task Force for Improving Special Education for Public School Students. But instead of improving special education, one task force member says the final report focused on cutting costs, not cost-effectiveness. She’s Jean Pasternak, a task force participant who also has a child with special needs. She spoke with NJTV News Anchor Mary Alice Williams.
Williams: You say you weren’t even sent a copy of the final report?
Pasternak: No, we never received a copy. It was rather surprising. The report came out on the day after Thanksgiving and it seemed as though it was almost intended to get no attention and no focus. The fact that we did not receive a copy was rather alarming, to say the least.
Williams: You did ultimately get a copy. Do you say it didn’t reflect the parents’ concerns? What in the public hearings were the parents’ concerns?
Pasternak: The primary focus that I heard from parents and I’ve heard for the last decade working closely with parents and my community and outside my community across the state is that there are plenty of laws that are protecting our families and our children, but they’re not enforced and that is really the seam of what I heard from parents throughout the hearings. The statutes that govern the state of New Jersey, special education provision and also the federal law — which is called IDEA — both those levels of law are not being adhered to by local school districts. The way in which that would happen is if there was more accountability and attention from the Department of Education’s office of special education programs.
Williams: Do you mean they’re not being taught?
Pasternak: They’re being taught, but not using necessarily the correct programs. There’s not enough feedback loop within the programming so that student achievement is measured and then the programming and the instruction is readjusted to reflect what works and what doesn’t work. This is where the problems occur. So, if you look at the achievement data you can see in there that more than half of the students are not achieving proficiency based on state standardized testing. That was in 2014. To me that’s a travesty. Why would we not be able to at least get an average, or a proficient level, for all our students?
Williams: Was there anything positive in the report?
Pasternak: There were very many things that I felt were positive, but they were old news. These were things that previous task forces touched on, had gone even into more depth on, but none of these things had been implemented and that’s the disappointment that I had. We started off looking at the old task force reports, the New Jersey reading task force that had occurred a couple of years earlier. They had some excellent recommendations, and in fact some of those turned into law, recent law, for dyslexic students. But they’re not complete.
Williams: Are parents and teachers on the same page? What do you think needs to be done?
Pasternak: I think that’s exactly the point. Parents and teachers really are on the same page. We know our kids. They are spending all day with our children. If we could work together and really drive this machine we would be so much better off. But for so many reasons, parents are afraid to speak out and certainly teachers are fearful of their jobs, retaliation. We all feel that we just don’t have a voice. That much of this is controlled by administrators, union representatives, etc. If we could just get right down to the people, as they say, we would just be so much better off. We could solve problems.
Williams: You reached out to the governor and the state education commissioner. Have you heard back?
Pasternak: No. I have not. We wrote a letter directly and have not heard anything back.