Michael Barbour's blog Virtual School Meanderings gets a lot more visitors than this blog. It helps that he posts multiple times daily. I asked for him to address this topic and he offered me a guest spot on is blog.
Guest Blog Entry: ADA Title II Regs… IMPORTANT! | Virtual School Meanderings (wordpress.com)
I was interviewed for this EdUp podcast. I was, as you'll see, pretty freewheeling. I was told not to prepare, and so that's how I went into it.
But I like the YouTube version better. EdUp didn't caption the session. You'll hear me get into that, but you can use the YouTube captioning with this version.Raymond M. Rose
Public Policy Chair, Texas
Digital Learning Association
Digital Accessibility
Certificate Program Design and Delivery Team
Just a little background so you know who I am. I have been
involved in virtual education in K-12 since its start. I was part of the team
that created the country’s first virtual high school, VHS. But I had been
directing one of the first teacher professional development projects funded by
the National Science Foundation (NSF) before that. Before getting involved with
virtual education, I had been a junior high science teacher, and a high school
guidance counselor before becoming a Civil Rights Specialist for the
Massachusetts Department of Education, and then trainer and manager for the
regional desegregation assistance center covering New England.
In 2007, as a member of the North American Council for
Online Learning (NACOL) Research Committee, I co-authored Access
and Equity in Online Classes and Virtual Schools. We knew there was no
guidance for the field. Ours was the first publication in the country
addressing accessibility issues in online education. In doing the research for
that publication, we discovered a school district that had established a policy
that students with Individual Education Plans (IEPs) were not allowed to take
an online course. The Office for Civil Rights cited the school district for
violation of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Unfortunately,
we continue to find reports of public schools that have an enrollment policy, yet
deny students with IEPs the ability to enroll in online learning opportunities.
It’s also relevant to note that the three earliest virtual education programs
in the country, Florida Virtual, Kentucky Virtual, and the Virtual High School,
have all enrolled students with disabilities from their inception.
Unfortunately, there was little interest in accessibility or
that 2007 publication. I presented at NACOL conferences and at other
educational conferences on accessibility whenever I could. Interest in digital
accessibility was slow to happen in K-12, but moved a bit faster in higher
education.
In 2012, the Texas Department of Information Resources,
required Texas state agencies and the institutions of higher education to
designate an Electronic Information Resources Accessibility Coordinator, though
it has taken some institutions until recently to comply.
By 2014, NACOL, now the International Association for K-12
Online Learning (iNACOL), asked me to write an update so I researched and
authored Access
and Equity for All Learners in Blended and Online Education became a
reality. By that time, there was more interest
in the importance and understanding of the need for accessibility. In
2010, the US Department of Education sent a Dear
Colleague letter to the presidents of colleges and universities to address
accessibility issues with electronic book readers. That letter stated:
…universities
agreed not to purchase, require, or recommend use of the Kindle DX, or any
other dedicated electronic book reader, unless or until the device is fully
accessible to individuals who are blind or have low vision, or the universities
provide reasonable accommodation or modification so that a student can acquire
the same information, engage in the same interactions, and enjoy the same
services as sighted students with substantially equivalent ease of use.
Then in 2011, in another letter to K-12
superintendents, they said the 2010 letter also applied to school districts and
they issued another letter to provide more information. It also said, among
other things:
Schools should begin by
considering accessibility issues up front, when they are deciding whether to
create or acquire emerging technology and when they are planning how the
technology will be used. To that end, schools should include
accessibility requirements and analyses as part of their acquisition procedures.
In my experience, this is largely ignored in K-12 education.
When OCR investigations find schools using digital resources that are not fully
accessible, the school district will be cited for non-compliance with Section
504.
2014 saw an increase in enforcement
of Section 504, especially as related to online accessibility issues. In the
compliance reviews, OCR stated their operational definition of accessibility,
which is a clarification of the 2010 letter. It states:
Those
with a disability are able to acquire the same information and engage in the
same interaction -- and within the same time frame – as those without
disabilities.
While it’s easy to say schools need
to review all digital materials for accessibility before purchase or use, the
scramble for digital resources at the start of the pandemic showed how little
accessibility was a consideration in the selection of digital resources.
One question is: when do schools
(teachers and school leaders) learn about the OCR definition of accessibility
or how to review materials for accessibility? The short answer is they
don’t. TEA’s certification requirements for teachers and school leaders drive
the Educational Preparation Program and Education Leadership curriculums and
yet do not include specific mention of digital accessibility.
School districts are required by
Section 504 to identify a Section 504 Coordinator. That role is normally just
added to the existing Special Education Director’s job description. But, in the
place where educators might be exposed to Section 504 regulations, special
education preparation, it is generally treated as just like special education. Professional
development programs must focus on all aspects of Section 504 to ensure school
leaders and those assigned to the role of Section 504 Coordinator have a
comprehensive understanding of the regulations and implications of Section 504,
especially as it concerns digital accessibility.
New teachers don’t have the
knowledge nor the time to add another task to their lives. One solution is the
building of high-quality professional development programs for practicing
teachers and school leaders. One that will introduce accessibility legislation
and provide them with the skills to conduct accessibility reviews of digital
resources. And, to make clear that it is morally, ethically, and most
importantly, legally inappropriate to deny any student with a disability access
to virtual education or digital resources.
I've been slipping, and not posting. There have been a variety of things worth posting. So, I'll make this a series of things that should have been posted over the past months.
Here's an article that I co-authored with Mary Rice. It's a result of a session we did together at DLAC 2022. Connecting accessibility, third-party curriculum and student success
School districts must carefully vet digital resources to ensure IDEA compliance, two learning accessibility advocates write.
The US Department of Justice posted Guidance on Web Accessibility and the ADA.
There's nothing new in the guidance. It's the same things that we've been talking about for years. But, it is nice to have DoJ reiterate them. And in that post there's some examples of issues, again, no surprises but useful information when you want to show examples.
The Texas Legislature, established the Texas Commission on Virtual Education.
The commission was established to develop and make recommendations regarding the delivery of virtual education in the public school system and state funding for virtual education under the Foundation School Program. Tphe Commission has to prepare a report to deliver to the next Legislative session that begins in January 2023. They hold monthly meetings which are streamed, and the past meetings are available on the website. Mary Rice and I will be making a presentation to the Commission at it's May 25th session.
There's a nice TCEA blog post: How to Encourage Digital Accessibility written by Miguel Guhlin after we had a few email exchanges.
I think this is a significant blog post for TCEA. I've been trying to get some visibility for digital accessibility within TCEA for years and I count this as a significant win.
I've been having a discussion with some colleagues about what it will take to get some changes in both the way we prepare folks to run our k-12 schools and how we get them to understand more about online learning.
We've seen, over the past year and a half, that educational leaders in general, don't have a good idea of what high-quality online learning looks like, or what it takes to make it happen. Our past experience with emergency remote instruction (sometimes called virtual education) was generally not the best experience.
(I do try to mention, when I have the opportunity, that not all on-campus learning experiences are wonderful.)
What is clear, there's been little preparation in teacher preservice education or in educational leadership programs that helped to prepare the education community for a totally virtual experience.
One colleague suggested that the state legislative education committees might be a way to influence policy. Hmmm. So, this week I sent a message to every member of both the Texas Senate and House education committees. But since I'm not in any of their districts it will be interesting to see if there's even an acknowledgment.
Here's the message:
Distance learning, correspondence course, virtual learning, online learning, emergency remote learning, Zoom school. Do those terms each bring to mind a different image of education? In 1960 a computer-based instruction, called Plato began. In 1995 I was part of the team that created the first virtual high school in the United States. Virtual instruction has been well researched and has refined and improved in quality over the past two-plus decades. There are quality standards for virtual education.
Unfortunately, the COVID pandemic forced schools to abandon what they knew best how to do, and rushed into emergency remote learning, often with little though and planning. Students and teachers were asked to do things they were totally unfamiliar with. It is not surprising then that emergency remote learning was not as successful as on-campus instruction.
But, emergency remote learning was not and will not be the same as virtual schooling. There are many different approaches to virtual education, some are synchronous, the longer established are more often asynchronous. There are studies of virtual education programs that report no significant difference in student learning between online and on-campus learning. There has been little research that evaluates the issues with emergency remote learning. Like with virtual education, there are many flavors of emergency remote learning and trying to paint them all with the same brush does a disservice to the field.
My purpose in writing is point out that policies that use the term virtual or online education as a catch-all, are mixing the good, long-established, and studied programs with the hurriedly put together emergency remote instruction.
Language is important. Quality is important. Experience contributes to high quality online learning. Not all online learning is of high quality. Not all on-campus learning is of high quality. But there are wonderful, high-quality examples of learning in both approaches. Please don’t prevent schools from replicating or creating high quality online learning programs. The students will benefit.
The headline in the Boston Globe magazine read Civil
Rights groups urge state to change ‘discriminatory’ vocational school
admissions policies to lottery. I had to read it. I was a Civil
Rights Specialist with the Massachusetts Department of Education 1978-1980. I
had a role in reviewing the admissions policies for the public regional
vocational-technical high schools.
At the time, many of the VocTechs had a set of hoops
students had to go thru to get accepted. One was a Differential Aptitude Test
(DAT). At the time, the test had
separate scoring for males and females. It had been normed by having adults in
a variety fields take the test and then creating profiles for them. It was
never designed to be a screening test. That it had separate norms made its use
questionable. That it was never designed to predict success in a field made its
use questionable. That it had been normed on adults rather than junior high and
senior high school students made its use questionable. As a result we said the
DAT could not use as part of the admission screening process for VocTechs.
The Massachusetts Department of Education had a role then, in
working to ensure that VocTech admissions were free of bias. We worked with
those programs to ensure that all programs were open without regard to
student’s race, sex, color, or national origin. The department was also working
to ensure that students with IEPs were not arbitrarily excluded from admission.
At the time I was with the Department Greg
Anrig was the Commissioner, and he wanted the Department to monitor LEA
compliance. That approach didn’t sit well with the Superintendents who were on
having to ensure that their programs were in compliance with state and federal
legislation. The next Commissioner had been a Superintendent and was determined
to take the Department out of the role of compliance monitor.
I believe that empowered Superintendents and significantly
undermined the role of the Department. And, looking at the Globe report, I’d
say the Dept of Education has continued to avoid protecting students of color, low-income students, students with
disabilities,
and English learners.
Distance education has existed for a long time. Think
correspondence courses and the pony express. Education at a distance has
evolved as new technologies have been created. Radio and television played a
role in distance education sometimes used to reach students who were unable to
attend classes in a brick-and-mortar setting. Often the technology has been
used to attempt to reflect as close as possible the traditional instructional
brick-and-mortar models. Early email instruction resembled first correspondence
and then lecture classes. In the mid-90s
a new approach to education at a distance provided an alternative to the
synchronous satellite television and proliferation of satellite dishes that
were used to show that the school was advanced.
Virtual education started, not as a replacement for the
brick-and-mortar school but as a supplement. And primarily was asynchronous. Quick
move to 2020 and the COVID pandemic where schools were closed to help prevent
the spread of the disease. Because virtual education had grown from the first
few programs to over thousands of schools and programs reaching millions of
students and there were many different approaches to online learning in play,
school leaders quickly instituted remote learning options generally with little
thought to preparing or supporting teachers to operate in this new environment
(and I use the term “remote learning,” and not “online learning” here
purposefully). Sometimes they looked critically at the distance learning field,
but more likely just felt if there were lots of virtual education programs it
had to be easy.
Recently we’re seeing a good deal written about remote instruction
with much of it being critical. Rightly so. What was missing, was the clear
statements that online learning isn’t as simple as posting PowerPoint slides
online or recreating the brick-and-mortar class activities in Zoom. And some of
that needs to be owned by stakeholders in the field of virtual schooling at all
levels who have been involved for over two decades, was what is actually
required to provide quality online learning experiences. There are now a myriad
of approaches to online learning. There is not a single instructional approach.
But if you don’t study online learning broadly then it’s like the blindfolded
feeling the elephant and having a limited experience but thinking they know
what an elephant is like.
The educational research on distance education, online
learning, and remote learning all suffers from the same problem. Many
researchers will report their results as generic for all online or remote
learning contexts. That paints the field with a very wide brush and the
research tends to reflect the inherent biases of the researcher. There is a
limited amount of research findings for many different approaches, but seldom
does the research describe the approach used for the subject of the research.
Selective use of research to write about online, virtual, or
remote learning can paint most any picture the writer wishes to portray. And then, that research is used to present a
generic view of the learning, without characterizing the specific approach or
stating that they are not talking about the entire field. In many instances the
author themselves have such limited knowledge of the broader field they don’t
even know what they don’t know.
It is impossible, within the current range of research on online,
virtual, or remote learning to make blanket statements about the field beyond
the observation that online and hybrid instruction can deliver strong results,
but like anything in education there is no guarantee of good outcomes. No
matter what the claim, there’s always some study that shows a conflicting
result. Any claim about the field, other than to point to the diversity, needs
to be tempered with some qualifying statements. A critical look at the tenor of
an article can actually provide the reader with a sense of the bias of the
writer in most cases. A knowledgeable writer will state their bias or
experiences to help provide transparency and provide the reader with
perspective.
Teacher Educator Technology Competencies (TETCs)
The TETCs have been written by insiders, and seemingly for insiders.
There’s a lot hidden between the lines. The problem with that is that
while it makes it easier to write a set of competencies with a team of people
with different experiences and expertise, it is sometimes harder to know what
the ideal would look like.
The TETCs were supported by a number
of organizations:
·
The United States
Department of Education Office of Educational Technology (US DoE)
·
International Society
of Technology in Education (ISTE)
·
Society for
Information Technology and Teacher Education (SITE)
·
Council for the
Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP)
·
National
Technology Leadership Coalition (NTLC)
·
American Association of
Colleges of Teacher Education (AACTE)
But what’s missing may have, in part,
been determined by who’s missing.
When I look at the competencies, I see
issues not addressed which are important components of K-12 education Here are terms I’d hope to see used in the next
iteration of these competencies:
· Accessibility,
· Adaptive technology,
· Disability,
· Equity Online learning,
· WCAG,
I know that the curriculum in teacher
educator programs is largely determined by the state education agency (SEA) and
their certification and program standards. That, unfortunately doesn’t
guarantee it to be relevant to today. When I was teaching the required
instructional technology course in an undergrad educator prep program, I
recommended that we incorporate instructional technology into the other courses
as a way of having an option for a new course.
I proposed that I’d create the instructional technology modules for the
other courses. My offer was declined
because the other professors weren’t interested in seeing that happen. So instructional technology was siloed rather
than integrated. While I can see that
the TETCs might be seen as encouraging integration within teacher education
programs, it’s not explicit.
I don’t see how the TETCs help
teachers select the best tech tools for remote instruction. One survey asked teachers how they selected
the tools they used for during Spring 2020.
The overwhelming response was ease of teacher use, not student
learning. Administrators threw remote
instruction onto teachers without support, and many districts still didn’t
provide professional development for teacher use of remote instruction tools
over the summer. Did they not know that
technology does require training and support, and remote teaching isn’t just
something to be picked up and happen magically?
It’s no wonder many students and parents have been frustrated by the
remote learning experience.
I had announced this webinar was happening before it took place, but then never posted the actual event. You can watch the webinar.
There have been a variety of statements written in the past few weeks about the systemic racism that has been
The “thoughts and prayers” comments used, especially by politicians after mass shootings – rather than a commitment to action were not used this time. But organizations have claimed to be allies to Black Lives Matter, condemning racism. What’s interesting is the vow to continue keeping on.
Which
organizations would you prefer to support?
Our education team works hard to identify and analyze promising innovations that could unlock more student-centered systems. We are committed to finding and understanding new approaches to undo entrenched practices and build an equitable education system that enables learners, particularly those from marginalized communities, to reach their fullest potential.
We commit to holding ourselves to account. To that end, we are reading, listening, learning, and partnering with experts who can help us to examine our own organizational practices to root out the biases that affect our work. We invite feedback and hope to engage in open dialogue as we move forward on this journey.
And then I got this one…
(Highlander Institute) We as white leaders can no longer claim to be part of the solution while simultaneously sitting on the sidelines, and so, we commit to the following:
And one that I didn’t see on Michael’s blog and this is only the final paragraphs of the message from John von Knorring President and Publisher Stylus Publishing
It’s now time not for reaction, but action.
In whatever sphere we operate, as employees; employers of service workers; users of gig services; business owners; educators; buyers of food, goods, and services; sports fans; citizens; and voter s, we need to be aware of the conditions under which people are working and whether they have opportunities for advancement or to earn a living wage, and whether these conditions of work are equitable across race.
If they are not, complain; call them out; write to the CEO; move your support
While this is a personal statement, it reflects the collective sentiments and views of Stylus’s staff and their commitment to equity and social justice, and who are working on a company-wide response. For my part, I will, beyond the work I do, keep this conversation to the fore within my family and social circle; work to influence my local community; and push my local, state, and federal representatives to work for equity and dismantle the racist structures that discriminate against Black and Brown people. to a different business; get on social media; get out and demonstrate (with social distancing); call your local, state, or federal representative. We can no longer afford, for the sake of our democracy and society, to be complicit. Bottom line: we white people MUST DO SOMETHING!
(The entire statement is here)
If you’ve gotten this far, please take action when you receive a message like these. Let them know you support them or help them understand why what they are saying isn’t sufficient. And if they need help knowing what to do
allegations that the developer knowingly failed to do the design and testing activities needed to deliver an accessible website. It is significant that the alleged fraud included that false claim that automated testing of the website would be sufficient.The case uses both the ADA and California's Unruh Act, so the Unruh component won't carry across state lines. ADA of course will.
