Minister's Advisory Council on Special EducationAnnual Report to the Minister for the Year 1999-00This publication is also available as a PDF Format (117 KB). Contents
The Honourable Janet Ecker Re: Annual report of the Minister's Advisory Council on Special Education Dear Minister Ecker: It is with great pleasure that I submit to you this report on the activities of your Advisory Council on Special Education during the fiscal year 1999/2000. On behalf of the members of the Council, I would like to thank you for your active involvement with the Council and for the many opportunities I and other members of Council have had to contribute to the development of special education policy. We have recently received the Order in Council extending the mandate of your Council for five years to March 2005. We are particularly pleased that the government has recognized the need for additional Council meeting time to give us the opportunity to develop more fully our advice to you on special education matters. We also appreciate the addition of a Native representative as a voting member of the Council and the addition of representatives from the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities and the Children's Secretariat as non-voting members. As in previous years, the attached report includes a message to the Minister documenting some of Council's principal observations and recommendations, and also includes a detailed description of the activities of your Council during 1999/2000. I look forward to meeting with you in the near future to discuss the issues raised by Council and summarized in this report. I also would like to extend an invitation to you to attend the Council's next meeting which is scheduled for October 17 and 18, 2000. Yours sincerely, (signed) Lynn Ziraldo Top of document Part 1: Council's Message to the MinisterSeptember 11, 2000 Dear Minister Ecker: As your Advisory Council1, we believe it to be our role to document successful practices as well as the challenges facing the special education community and to recommend to you appropriate actions in response to this information. This message highlights some of the significant observations and positions of the Council over the 1999/2000 year and the first part of the 2000/2001 year. To be of greatest possible benefit to our continuing dialogue, this message emphasises issues of concern to the Council at the time of writing (Summer 2000). A complete list of the Council's resolutions for the year 1999/2000 is included in Part 3 of this report. 1 A description of the mandate and structure of the Council is attached to this report as Appendix 1. Top of documentCouncil's Priorities for 1999/2000At each meeting of the Council, each Council member is encouraged to table a report on the recent consultation with the organizations in his or her constituency. These reports are shared among Council members in order that the perceptions of successful practices and of issues and concerns are known to all members. Each year at its June meeting, Council reviews the emerging issues of concern to members and establishes a short list of priorities for the coming year. At its June 17, 1999 meeting the Council identified priority areas for work during the 1999/2000 year:
For each of these priority areas, Council has an active standing subcommittee. The subcommittees meet as needed, usually by teleconference, to examine issues and draft resolutions for the consideration of the full Council at its next regular meeting. At its June 15, 2000 meeting, Council re-examined its priorities and set the following five priorities for 2000/2001:
The roles of Council's standing committees are continuing to evolve to accommodate these changing priorities. In addtition, a number of ad hoc subcommittees were created to respond to specific issues such as the Special Education Information Handbook, the Role of Education Assistants, Transportation of Exceptional Students, and Special Education Statistics. The following sections are organized in accordance with Council's five priority concerns with an emphasis on the emerging concerns which will guide our deliberations in 2000/2001. Top of document Special Education FundingCouncil continues to be supportive of the concepts of transparency and portability of special education funding which are embodied in the student focussed funding model. Council welcomes the increases in special education funding provided by the government over the past two years. The decision to protect school boards' ISA allocations for 2000/2001 at a minimum of the 1999/2000 level was also very helpful to school boards in planning for 2000/2001 special education programs and services. We recognize that there are always additional needs of exceptional students which could be met through still more funding. However, our primary concerns are with the mechanisms for distribution of the funds provided. The principal source of concern is with the process for identification and distribution of the Intensive Support Amount (ISA) portion of the special education grant. This concern is centred on the ISA student profiles, assessment requirements, and the validation process. Last year we advised that there was considerable confusion among school board officials and parents about the intent of the ISA profiles. Parents advised us that the ISA criteria were restrictive and that they feared students who failed to match the profiles in some minor respect would be denied needed programs and services. Over the past year, evidence has accumulated that this is indeed occurring. Despite the announcement of the Minister on January 27, 2000 that ISA funding for 2000/2001 would not be tied to specific students, many school board officials are continuing to advise parents that needed special education programs and services cannot be provided to their child because the ministry (through its ISA process) has determined that their child does not warrant such programs or services. It appears that the ministry message is not getting through to a significant number of teachers, principals, school board officials and parents. We also advised last year of concerns from parents that programs and services may be identified in student's Individual Education Plans for the sole purpose of obtaining funds and that some school boards may then use the funds for other purposes. This practice appears to have developed as we had feared. We have received a number of reports of Individual Education Plans being written, not to reflect the needs of students, but to gain access to ISA funds. While we anticipate that the ministry's recent steps to separate ISA funding from individual students will give school boards additional flexibility in the allocation of special education dollars, we believe that the use of student's IEP as documentation to support ISA claims may continue to distort the program planning process for individual students. In order to achieve a measure of objectivity in ISA funding decisions the ministry has required a psychological or medical assessment with documentation of a particular diagnosis in a number of exceptionality areas. Experience is showing that medical or psychological assessments done for purposes of identification and placement do not necessarily require (and consequently, do not always contain) the diagnosis required for purposes of documenting ISA claims. We have been informed by school boards that this can lead to the diversion of psychological, social work, and other support services to the goal of reassessing students or writing reports for funding purposes. We have also heard of parents being informed by school boards that special education programs and services can only be provided to their children if the parent obtains an assessment privately which matches the ISA funding criteria. We are aware that the ministry has clarified the need for assessments stating that for lifelong conditions such as autism and developmental disability, an initial diagnosis will be sufficient documentation along with current educational assessments. We urge the ministry to continue to monitor this issue to ensure that ISA documentation requirements are appropriately understood by school boards and that children are not being reassessed purely for funding purposes. A fourth significant concern has emerged during the validation process for the 2000/2001 funding which took place in the Spring of 2000. The ISA profiles were written to provide clear and objective guidelines to school boards in selecting and documenting high need students for ISA funding purposes. In last year's report we noted Council's concern that the Ministry had not followed the advice of its Expert Panel (on which Council members had participated) and had restricted the eligibility criteria in a number of the profiles. We urged the Ministry to reconsider. This January the Minister announced the decision to retain the profiles unchanged in order to provide needed stability for school boards. While this decision did indeed provide stability, it preserved perceived inequities in a number of exceptionality areas including emotional/behavioural, learning disability, and developmental disability. We repeat our request for the profiles to be reviewed especially in these three areas. This year, in preparation for the validation of ISA funding claims, we understand that ministry staff and the ministry validators intensively reviewed the profiles and developed additional guidelines for the validators in order to ensure consistency in application of the profiles. While the stated intent was to ensure consistency of validation decisions across school boards, there have also been some additional consequences. The validators' guidelines were perceived by many school board officials to function as additional unpublished criteria which further restricted the number of students accepted for ISA funding. If these additional criteria had been known earlier, considerable unproductive effort by school boards and parents could have been avoided. The impact of these decisions appears to have been greatest in the area of developmental disability where a percentile IQ score appears to have been adopted unannounced by the ministry. We urge the ministry to publish all of its criteria in the future. Council recognizes the significant challenges of refining the special education funding process to achieve its intended purposes. We look forward to working with ministry staff through our Special Education Funding Subcommittee to clarify any gaps between the current funding formula and the application of funds to meet the needs of the students for whom the funds are intended. Where such gaps exist we need to determine whether school boards are able to address the needs in the current environment, and to initiate any changes necessary to achieve a funding process which both supports student's needs and ensures accountability. Top of document Accountability and StandardsCouncil is particularly appreciative of the personal accountability of Minister Ecker and of past Ministers Johnson and Snobelen in attending each of Council's meetings and dialoguing candidly with members about the government's initiatives. We also very much appreciate the accountability of ministry staff in providing written responses to each of Council's resolutions. Access of the chair and Council members to ministry staff is also excellent as is the support of ministry staff to the Council at meetings. These actions of the minister and ministry staff set a positive example for the Council and the school boards as the ministry pursues its objective of increasing accountability throughout the education system. Council welcomed the announcement of the Minister on January 27, 2000 that the ministry will be developing standards for Individual Education Plans, school board special education plans and program standards for each exceptionality area. We look forward to working closely with ministry staff in the development of these standards. These standards will have the potential to bring much needed consistency to special education programs and services across school boards. As with the government's existing legislation and regulations in special education, without monitoring and enforcement by the ministry school boards may be slow to implement the standards especially if sufficient financial resources are not available. In the event that funding or other barriers to implementation exist, monitoring by the ministry will bring these to light enabling necessary corrective action to be planned. Council also welcomed the ministry's thorough review of school boards' 1999 special education plans. We are awaiting the publication by the ministry of its summary report of this review. We encourage the ministry to continue with this level of scrutiny of the boards' special education plans for 2000 and for subsequent years. Council particularly endorses the ministry's practice, begun with the 1999 plans, of reviewing the comments on the plans provided by the school boards' Special Education Advisory Committees (SEACs). In 1997, regulation 464/97 increased the role of school board Special Education Advisory Committees (SEACs), requiring school boards to share and consult with their SEACs on their budgets, financial statements and special education plans. Members of SEACs have advised us of their need for training and guidelines to assist them to contribute optimally to the budgeting and special education planning processes of the school boards. We acknowledge the commitment of the ministry to provide training to SEAC members in conjunction with the training for school board personnel around the new IEP and Special Education Plan standards. We are pleased with the ministry commitment that this training will include the accountability role of SEACs in regulation 464/97 and we look forward to working with ministry staff in the development and delivery of this training. The apparent reduction in the range of placement options for exceptional students (which we identified in last year's report) continues to be a concern. Too often exceptional students are being required to attend those programs which boards choose to provide and not the programs which they most need. We urge the ministry, through its standards for Individual Education Plans and school board special education plans to monitor and require all school boards to provide or purchase the programs and services needed by their students. There is also concern among some of our members that the program standards which the ministry is developing must not be written to encourage one form of program placement over another. The program standards must not presuppose or require either a segregated placement or a fully integrated placement. They must support programming throughout the complete range of placements. In last year's report we highlighted the need to give parents some clear direction on procedures to follow in the event of disagreement with their school or school board on matters other than the identification and placement of their children. Too many parents are frustrated and confused about what "proper channels" to follow in the event of disagreements in matters such as IEPs, report cards, teacher attitudes, or provincial testing. We anticipate that such direction will appear in the Special Education Information Handbook. As the Handbook is a large document intended primarily for use by school boards, it may not be readily accessible to all parents. Consequently, this information is also needed on the ministry web site. We also encourage the ministry to consider requiring it to be placed in the school board's parent guides. Top of document Curriculum and AssessmentCouncil wishes to congratulate the ministry on the successful completion of the new elementary and secondary curriculum documents. We believe that the greater degree of precision in these documents will be of benefit to educators, parents and students throughout the province. However, this added rigour in the specification of learning expectations, together with provincial testing and the provincial report card increases the challenge to the school system to identify exceptional students early and to provide the special education programs and services which they need in order to succeed in school. We have documented elsewhere our concern that sufficient information needed by classroom teachers about accommodations for exceptional students was not published in the ministry's curriculum documents, but was published in a separate companion document titled Program Planning and Assessment: Grades 9 to 12. Council acknowledges the commitment of the ministry to print sufficient copies of Program Planning and Assessment to ensure that every teacher in the province has a copy. However, we believe that this is a second best solution. We believe that the separation of special education material from the curriculum documents is symbolic of an inappropriate and outdated way of thinking about special education as separate from and not concerned with the regular activities of the school. In contrast, Council applauds the approach taken by the ministry in the Ontario Secondary Schools and Choices into Action documents where accommodations for exceptional students were interwoven throughout the documents. We also applaud the approach in the Elementary Curriculum Planner in which the excellent and useful material of the Special Education Companion is accessible by teachers from any place in the planner. It is our hope that the Program Planning and Assessment document will be the last ministry document to segregate special education from the mainstream. Council continues to be concerned about options that are available for students who, in the past, would have enrolled in basic level courses. We are aware that school boards may develop local courses in English, math and science for these students and that other strategies such as substitution of credit courses may be employed. We are also encouraged by the planned development of pathways to employment and a skills passport which we understand will provide another route for students who do not graduate with an Ontario Secondary School Diploma or Ontario Secondary School Certificate. We continue to urge the ministry to monitor this issue closely and to take what action is necessary to ensure that these students receive the programs and services which they need. Last year Council expressed its concern that the implementation of the Grade 10 Test of Reading and Writing should not penalize exceptional students unfairly. Council has reviewed the draft accommodation policy circulated by the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) and has identified, and communicated to EQAO, a number of significant concerns which could make this test a systemic barrier to graduation for some students with disabilities. Proposed policies such as (only) doubling the amount of time for exceptional students, and prohibiting teachers from explaining the instructions suggest a fundamental lack of clarity about the nature of the test itself and about the concept of literacy which it is designed to assess. Council welcomes the decision that the 2000/2001 year will be a trial year for the test, and we encourage the ministry and EQAO to proceed with the utmost caution in this very sensitive area. We look forward to the results of this trial and to discussing any indicated policy implications with EQAO and the ministry. Top of document Coordinated ServicesCouncil appreciates the excellent work of the ministry in leading the interministerial review of school health and psychosocial support services currently governed by the 1984 Policy / Program Memorandum 81 and the 1987 Interministerial Guidelines for the Provision of Speech and Language Services. We are particularly appreciative of the high degree of involvement of Council members and other members of the education, health and social service communities on the steering committee and the three task groups. We are eagerly looking forward to reviewing the report of the steering committee. Finally Council welcomed the announcement of the Minister on January 27, 2000 committing the Ministry of Education to taking the lead in coordinating services from the health and social service sectors for students in schools. We look forward to working with the ministries in implementing the recommendations from the PPM 81 review and improving service coordination among the ministries and sectors. Council also appreciates the involvement at Council meetings and on Council subcommittees (particularly the Interministerial Coordination subcommittee) of representatives from the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Community and Social Services, and the Office of Integrated Services for Children. We also note with appreciation the revision of Council's membership to include the Children's Secretariat and the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities who will now join representatives of the Ministries of Health and Long Term Care and Community and Social Services as non-voting members of the Council. Top of document Student TransitionsCouncil continues to await the publication of the Ministry of Education Transition Planning Resource Guide and the Special Education Information Handbook. We hear from parents and school board officials that some school boards are awaiting the publication of the Transition Planning Resource Guide before taking any significant steps to implement transition planning. We believe that the delay in the publication of this document signals to the school boards that the ministry is not serious about its regulatory requirement for transition planning. We urge the ministry to proceed with publication of this document (and the Special Education Information Handbook) immediately. Top of document Other Matters– Safe Schools Act Council acknowledges the provisions of the Safe Schools Act and regulations directed to exceptional students. Members have expressed concerns that, notwithstanding these provisions, implementation of the government's Safe Schools Act may lead to inappropriate action (suspension or expulsion) against students who really require accommodations and appropriate strategies to address their emotional and behavioural disorders. We acknowledge the commitment of the ministry to provide appropriate guidance for school boards in implementing the Safe Schools Act with respect to exceptional students and we look forward to working with ministry staff on this important task. As we noted in last year's report, ministry staff have prepared a draft guideline which would provide considerable assistance to educators in implementing the Safe Schools Act with respect to exceptional students. This document is known as Special Education Monograph 5. Council would like to see this document revised in light of the Safe Schools Act and released to school boards as soon as possible in order to minimize possible inappropriate application of the provisions of the Act to exceptional students. Ideally, the principles embodied in Monograph 5 should be interwoven as appropriate into the safe schools policies of local schools and school boards. – Challenges of French Language School Boards French language school boards report a number of challenges in serving their exceptional students who, they believe, are not adequately funded by the current funding model.
We thank you, Minister, for the opportunity to submit this report. We continue to appreciate the support which you and the staff of the Ministry of Education provide to this Council and we look forward to working closely with you and with ministry staff over the coming year to bring further improvements to special education in Ontario. Yours Sincerely (signed) Lynn Ziraldo Top of document Part 2: Activities of the Council in 1999/2000MembershipDuring 1999/2000 there were three membership changes on Council:
The membership of Council at the end of 1999/2000 is shown in Appendix 2. Meetings2 The Council held meetings on June 17 and October 21, 1999 and on February 17, 2000. The June 17, 1999 agenda included topics on:
The October 21, 1999 agenda included topics on:
The February 17, 2000 agenda included topics on:
2Copies of the minutes of these meetings are available in English or French by writing to Mr. Mark Agius, Secretary, Minister's Advisory Council on Special Education, suite 710, 7th Floor, 2 Carlton Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5B 1J3; fax: (416) 325-3318; e-mail at mark.agius@ontario.ca The Honourable Janet Ecker, Minister of Education joined the Council at its October 21, 1999 and February 17, 2000 meetings for an exchange of views on special education issues and on the government's accomplishments in education reform and current initiatives in special education. Members of the Council were reassured and pleased to hear from the Minister of her personal commitment to exceptional students and her appreciation for the role of her Advisory Council on Special Education. Sub-CommitteesFive standing sub-committees have been active:
In addition six Ad-Hoc Committees have been created to assist with specific issues:
Details of committee and subcommittee membership is detailed in Appendix 3. ResolutionsIn the course of its three meetings of 1999/2000, Council made 37 formal recommendations to the minister in the form of resolutions. Council's resolutions are listed in Part 3 of this report. ConsultationsCouncil Chair, Lynn Ziraldo, and other members of Council met on several occasions with senior officials of the ministry in order to ensure that the perspective, concerns and recommendations of the Council are understood by those who have responsibility for developing and implementing policies and programs. Council provided representatives to ministry consultation meetings on a variety of issues including: education finance reform; curriculum; provincial report cards; provincial testing. Members of Council addressed audiences throughout Ontario providing information about the Council and inviting input. Members also continued to collect information on successful practices and concerns / challenges from the special education community to inform their understanding of issues and to assist Council in setting its agenda for future years. Click here to view a sample of the form used by Council members to report on these consultations. Self-evaluationCouncil also continued its practice of continual assessment of its our own effectiveness. A summary of evaluative feedback from Council members is provided to all members and to ministry staff following each meeting. Click here to view a sample of the form used by Council members to provide their evaluative feedback. Top of document Part 3: Resolutions of the Minister's Advisory Council on Special EducationJune 1999 – February 2000
Appendix 1Top of documentMandate and Structure of the CouncilThe Advisory Committee on Special Education was established in 1974 and has been renewed continually from that date, with a name change to the Minister's Advisory Council on Special Education in 1986. Following a thorough review in 1995, the structure and function of the Council were changed in 1996 and remained unchanged until some further changes were made during the Summer of 2000. The following describes the mandate and structure the Council as it existed during the 1999/2000 year. The Council advises the Minister of Education on any matter related to the establishment and provision of special education programs and services for exceptional students, including the identification and provision of early intervention programs for students with special needs. In particular, the Council:
The basis of membership on the Council was changed in 1996. Instead of seats for specific organizations, the Council now has:
Members are appointed by the Minister from nominations received from over 80 organizations with an interest in special education. Each member is responsible for liaising with and representing the interests of all organizations in his or her constituency. Details of the nomination and appointment process have been published by the ministry on its World Wide Web site at http://www.edu.gov.on.ca (see Minister's Advisory Council on Special Education under Agencies, Boards and Commissions). In the Summer of 2000 some further revisions were made to the mandate and structure of the Council.
Appendix 2Top of documentMembers of the Minister's Advisory Council on Special Education
Appendix 3Top of documentSubcommittees of the Minister's Advisory Council on Special EducationApril 01, 1999 – March 2000
Top of document AD HOC COMMITTEESSAFE SCHOOLS / CODE OF CONDUCTJeanne Robinson Janice Prock James Arthur Greg Gillis Terry Geddes Jean Luc Bernard Lynn Ziraldo (ex officio) TRANSPORTATION Derryn Gill Diane McLeod Carol Clark SPECIAL EDUCATION HANDBOOK Joanne Lee (chair) Carol Clark Janice Prock Derryn Gill Lynn Ziraldo Susan Bassili Susan Garlock GRADE TEN TEST OF READING AND WRITING Janice Prock (chair) Raymond LeBlanc Terry Geddes Joanne Lee Carol Clark STATISTICS Raymond LeBlanc (chair) Jane Loughborough Susan Bassili Janice Prock EDUCATIONAL ASSISTANTS Jeanne Robinson (chair) Susan Garlock Terry Geddes Jean Luc Bernard Lynn Ziraldo (ex-officio) |
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