A Lesson in Leaving

She just wanted to teach. But Beverly Summerbell, who retired this past spring from the suburban Andover Elementary school after 28 years as a special-education instructor, says a mountain of paper got between her and her students: "It became so that I had two full-time jobs: one teaching and one doing paperwork. I got a computer so that I could do my paperwork at home, because there wasn't time during the school day. And you always have that worry--did I fill out every form properly? Is every i dotted or t crossed? Because the federal and state people come in and check your records."

Terry Zielinski, the lead social worker for the Minneapolis Public Schools, has heard his share of complaints like Summerbell's during his 16 years in city schools. By now, he says, it's no secret why for the past couple of years such a high number of his colleagues in special education are leaving the profession: paperwork. Reams, stacks, boxes of it.

"The frustration level with these forms is high," he says, pulling a pile of documents from a file cabinet in his cramped office at the district headquarters in northeast Minneapolis. "I hear it from teachers all the time. These teachers mean not just the paper itself, but the complexity behind that, the level of understanding and time required to do extremely difficult paperwork."

Each year brings more obligatory documentation, he notes--made necessary by federal legislation and by legal advisers concerned about litigious parents convinced that their children aren't being properly educated. The result? Overwhelmed and fed-up teachers. And a record-setting number of vacancies in special-ed classrooms that has left area schools scrambling to provide services.

Kindergarten to high school teachers are in high demand locally, period (see City Pages' June 9 story "A Bull in the Classroom"); but the shortage is especially dire in special-ed departments. That's because the number of students in those programs is increasing--there are now around 6,400 in Minneapolis public schools--at the same time vacancies in the district's 850-plus special-ed teaching positions are going up--way up.

Still, teachers who resign their special-ed positions aren't leaving schools altogether. Rather, as openings crop up in regular classrooms, a good share are simply crossing the hall, according to a state study--Issue Paper #1: Special Education Teacher Shortages in Minnesota--published in August by the Minnesota Department of Children, Families & Learning, which oversees the state's education and child-based agencies.

Typically, says Jeff Bradt, director of human resources for the Minneapolis district, schools can expect a faculty turnover of between four and five percent in general; right now the rate for special-ed resignations is running at more than three times that. Departure figures for special-ed instructors around the state as a whole match that of the city in a few particular fields, including Emotional/Behavioral Disorder (EBD) and Specific Learning Disability (SLD) instruction (in 1998 alone, according to the study, 18 percent of Minnesota's EBD teachers left their posts).

The report analyzes the numbers in a frank manner: "In what some are calling an 'exodus,'" it reads, "growing numbers of special education teachers are leaving the field citing such reasons as increasing paperwork demands."

"Here's the first piece," Terry Zielinski offers as he whips out an Individualized Evaluation Program (IEP) form, the most basic type of paperwork in the profession. It is but one of hundreds, thousands of documents stacked on his desk and shelves and file cabinets. "It is difficult to discuss the details of a five-page form, because people's eyes glaze over," he says, speeding up his comments so today's Tour of Paperwork can be as breezy as possible. About halfway through and an hour later, Zielinski pauses and remarks, "We've got a ways to go before we're done--like Robert Frost."

Zielinski's tour is thorough. He singles out box after box, line after line, chart after chart with the yellow pencil and explains each in great detail. The upshot is this: the IEP started out in 1975 as a one-page evaluation. It is now six pages, at a minimum, and can top twenty-five in some instances. And within those pages, nearly every section requires extensive background knowledge. Take an innocuous-looking box on the very first page: checked in the affirmative, it alone triggers a 12-page set of forms; another requires detailed cross-referencing with a quarter-inch-thick compendium manual.

Or take the part that asks for "areas presenting problems," on the form's second page. In some ways this is the cornerstone to the IEP, because it defines what a child may or may not be capable of. It's a small section, but requires conclusions reached only after the special-ed instructor has filled out another form, the Assessment Summary Report, which lists a total of 15 complicated and often overlapping disabilities, from autism to emotional/behavior disorders to brain injuries. The definitions for these categories are fluid, Zielinski notes; teachers must stay abreast of all sorts of changes, including a recent comprehensive overhaul spurred by federal legislation.

While educators don't dispute the value of the IEP--it does, after all, provide a detailed assessment to parents, school staff, and social workers--the time required to fill one out properly is time away from working directly with students. And fill it out teachers must: "Much of this paperwork is required by federal or state law," Zielinski says, and he refers specifically to the 1975 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which governs special education nationally. Its most recent incarnation contains some 400 different rules and regulations.