In relation to the NCTM's standards, it appears that there are serious limitations regarding the education of students with learning problems. Describe these limitations and defend, from a special educator's viewpoint, the need to have the standards include and reference students with disabilities

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Upon initial inspection, the NCTM standards are very appealing, and their goals are widely accepted. Closer inspection, however, reveals some serious limitations regarding the education of students with learning problems. The following limitations center around the modest attention given to student diversity and the rigid adherence to select instructional paradigms:
* The standards make only modest reference to students with disabilities (Hofmeister, 1993; Hutchinson, 1993b; Rivera, 1993; Woodward & Montague, 2002).
* The standards are not based on replicable, validated instructional programs. Research-supported instructional programs for students with moderate to mild disabilities are especially lacking (Hofmeister, 1993; Hutchinson, 1993b; Rivera, 1993).
* The standards promote a self-discovery approach for teaching math to all students. This position ignores the wealth of teaching practices generated from the process-product research (Englert, Tarrant, & Mariage, 1992) that have proven effective with students who have moderate to mild disabilities. Moreover, strict adherence to discovery learning does not recognize the promising findings being generated from educators who promote a directed discovery approach or educators who advocate a guided discovery approach.

[Students' responses will vary in regards to their discussion, from the special educator standpoint, regarding the need to have the standards include and reference students with disabilities.]