Special-needs students offer
the most challenge for educators

BRIGHT-eyed and focused, Regienald Calucag is one of the first students in his English as a second language class to finish a writing assignment, but the end product illustrates the uphill climb the state faces in revamping lagging public schools.

The Dole Middle School seventh- grader, who wants to be a doctor, is a recent immigrant from the Philippines, and his work is riddled with incomprehensible phrasing and signs that he misunderstood his instructions -- an otherwise bright child tripped by his limited English.

"I know what I want to say, but ... ," he says, running out of words as he pores over his work.

Raising the academic performance of students like Regienald will be crucial for the state and private education providers as they get to work on the first 24 Hawaii schools punished with "restructuring."

Ten of those schools met federal benchmarks on standardized tests as a whole, and are in restructuring only because one or more student groups -- such as English as a second language, those requiring special education, or the poor -- did not.

Under the federal No Child Left Behind law, each such group is held to the same test-performance standards as regular students, a facet of the law frequently criticized as illogical and unrealistic.

"That's going to be one of the greatest challenges, not just in Hawaii, but nationally," said Ronn Nozoe, regional superintendent for the district that includes Dole.

Yet the three mainland companies contracted to reform individual schools say they have no special programs for dealing with such students.

America's Choice, Edison Alliance and ETS Pulliam are formulating restructuring plans that will implement off-the-shelf reform programs, tweaked, they say, for each school's needs.

"(Our program) is geared to help all students at schools, not just any one group," said Leslie Pulliam, vice president of ETS Pulliam. "But schools with a lot of kids in those groups will find that they'll benefit, too."

Dole Middle School embodies the challenge that the providers face.

Of the 50 eighth-graders in the Kalihi school's special-education program, only one is reading at the eighth-grade level. Forty-seven, meanwhile, read at just a second-grade level.

"How do you take a child and move him up several grades to his grade-appropriate reading level when these kids have learning disabilities and other cognitive problems?" said Principal Myron Monte. "That's what we're dealing with here."

Some mainland schools have had problems because they weren't exposing special-ed kids to rigorous enough materials, said Karen Eldridge, a member of an advance Edison Alliance team reviewing the Kalihi school.

One remedy for Dole might be to ease special-ed students into regular-ed classes for exposure to more challenging material, she said.

"In many cases, students are just not being challenged, so we worked with them on increasing expectations," she said.

That approach could backfire at Dole, which faces a growing problem of special-education students shutting down under the pressure of No Child Left Behind.

"That's the heartbreaker, because we push and we push and we push and we demand so much of them and we see them getting upset in class and some of them just go ballistic," said Denise Apuna, head of Dole's special-ed department.

Holding special-education students to the same performance standards as other students may actually harm them, said Monte, who pulls out a file folder filled with information on students who have "shut down."

"I'm worried about what we're doing to these students. By setting unattainable goals, you set them up for a potentially damaging failure," he said.

The school also has large numbers of ESL students from immigrant families living in nearby housing projects.

These students typically take five to seven years to function academically in a standards-based system, said Dole ESL teacher Laura Ing.

Yet new ones arrive almost daily.

"Hardly a day goes by that a car doesn't pull up and unload a new student from Micronesia, the Philippines, Samoa or wherever," Monte said. "It's a big problem, no lie."

Molding such kids into NCLB compliance is especially difficult since many from countries like Micronesia simply don't have previous experience with formal schooling, said Ruth Silberstein, principal of Palolo Elementary School, which also will work with Edison Alliance.

Such students must first be taught basic classroom skills such as sitting still at a desk and raising hands before speaking.

Though she expects the Edison experience to be "overwhelmingly positive" for the school, she added: "I don't think Edison has an answer for the types of immigrant students we have. Their experience is mainly with the mainland Spanish-speakers, and we have a different world here."

The three providers stress that they have successfully dealt with these issues at many mainland schools and that their reform plans may ultimately focus on such problem areas.

At some schools, however, nearly the entire student body belongs to the "poor" subgroup, which typically suffers academically due to a range of poverty-related factors, including a dysfunctional home situation and low parent involvement, Monte said.

The providers' programs will include parent outreach components.

America's Choice, for example, has a "Home Notebook" feature designed as a clear communication channel between parents and schools. However, parental input will be purely voluntary, said Hazel Sumile, project manager for America's Choice.

"It is going to be up to the parents; all we can do is keep trying," she said. "There is no magic bullet."