Should students with cognitive disabilities be expected to demonstrate academic proficiency? Personally, my vote is no. Nonetheless, I absolutely advocate high achievement for students with cognitive disabilities; however, I do not believe these students should be held to the same standards as the rest of the student body. We should recognize that there are alternative standards or programs that can be used for students with cognitive disabilities that will certainly aid educational growth. It is essential that we provide these alternatives for those students who cannot reasonably be expected to learn the core curriculum and be tested on it. We want to focus on what students can do and how we can help them thrive. By holding students with cognitive disabilities to the same standards as those in general educational classes I believe we are actually discouraging students with cognitive disabilities to meet high standards. How unfair and frustrating would it be for a student with cognitive disabilities to be expected to achieve skills that are beyond their mental capacity. Some advocates for academic proficiency may suggest that having high expectations for all children (including those with cognitive disabilities) improves performance. Realistically, I believe we need to accept that there will be tasks that children with cognitive disabilities are unable to master. We can certainly encourage high achievement but we must be reasonable in what we expect. There have been students with cognitive disabilities who have impressed us all-completely blown us away with impressive accomplishments. However, as any student who may excel in a certain area, we cannot expect all children to meet these same standards. My concern is that we risk setting a child up for failure when expecting a child with cognitive disabilities to demonstrate academic proficiency. Exceptional students need options for curriculum, instruction, and placement.
I think the key word here is REASONABLE expectation. This is something that I looked at a lot when I did a practicum at a behavior modification program last year. Too often we don't realize that high expectations (and low ones too) aren't the same as a reasonable, or as we said it at the program, REALISTIC expectation. You can still set a high standard and it be something realistic for that child. They need to know that their success can be and is REAL. And, we need to stop teaching our children that success is a number or an end result. We know that that is not what success is at all. For all people, but these children especially, success is really in the progress you make. It sounds a little cliche, I know, but I think that we'd be doing a lot better service for our children if we taught them that instead of teaching them to reach the same number on a test as everyone else.
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