[arthurus]

but they(the good teachers) are caught in a system that is poisonous

My wife retired from primary spec ed teaching a year ago. She says she was able to continue in it because spec ed is the ugly stepchild of the school system and administration ignores it so she could actually teach real academic things to those of her kids who could absorb them. Some of her kids were reading and ciphering way beyond their peers when "mainstreamed" after a year or two with the wife. She could use phonics and real traditional arithmetic and other antiquated and banned things.

[Chickensoup]

Yes and she was in a sick system.

Think of the good she could have done in a good private system.

[metmom]

That's really interesting because I have heard of situations in the public schools where the SPED kids do way better on exams than the *regular* kids and TA's who can sometimes read the tests to the kids are accused (by the other students) of giving them the answers cause nobody believes the SPED kids could do it.

Now mind you, these kids also know those other ones really well and know how smart they are so maybe there's a point.

But then again, maybe not.