Feb 14, 2018
What’s the scoop? New York City isn’t meeting its federally mandated obligations to students with special needs, according to the NYC Department of Education’s latest report on special education. Of the 180,000 NYC students with Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) in the 2016-17 school year, 23 percent were only “partially receiving” the educational support they required, while 4 percent didn’t receive any support.
What’s an IEP? IEPs are designed to give students (and their parents) a clear idea of how they’re performing academically and what support and services their schools can provide to meet their annual education goals. But with 4,500 students having to wait longer than 60 days last year for their first IEP meeting, NYU professor of educational psychology Mark Alter says the “disturbing” NYC DOE report “raises the question whether these kids are receiving an appropriate education.”
The bottom line… Individualized tutoring is a proven means to improving academic performance for students with learning needs, but one-on-one tutoring can often be prohibitively expensive for low-income families. It’s going to take governments at all levels, and private initiatives like the Gates Foundation’s recent call for “networks for school improvement”, to support schools in effectively addressing the gaps in students’ access to the resources they critically need.
