Better to light a candle than curse the darkness

Published on: Author: Ellis Crasnow Leave a comment

There are many reasons one might be disheartened by the statistics on job success for individuals with special needs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics for 2014, 17.1% of persons with a disability were employed as opposed to 64.6% for those without a disability. Those with a disability are not only less likely to be employed, they are also less likely to hold onto a job, more likely to be underemployed, and more likely to be employed part-time. Other reasons to be disheartened by the prospects for future success of our students are the increased demands of the new Common Core which mandate that English be taught as part not only of ELA (English Language Arts), but as part of math too. And so some find this a reason too to bemoan the fate of those with special needs. If such students found it hard before to master the requirements of the ELA curriculum, how much harder will they find it now? And so they see here too a further barrier to our students’ success. Then there are the increased demands of the workplace for even entry-level positions. This too might seem a reason for despair.
By contrast, we find the increased standards of the Common Core an incentive to educate our students to higher standards so that they are better able to compete and succeed side by side with their peers. We want our students literate and numerate; we want them to be able to think and categorize and analyze, to speak and present and debate. We want them to be self-reliant, motivated, and ready to accept a challenge both personal and professional. All students need to be educated to those ends, not just ours and certainly not just those with or without special needs. And yes, it is true that the demands of the workplace are growing exponentially, but that is no reason to be disheartened; rather, that is a further reason to educate and guide to higher standards, to require more, to make available to all of our students the tools and resources they will need for future success.
The surer path to overcoming those disheartening statistics with which we began is to provide our students a rigorous academic curriculum and support them in assimilating it, encourage pro-social behavior and integrate activities which require it, and in so doing best prepare them for college and career, and life itself.

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