Educational...No Segregation Here

Christian schools should look quite different from government or public schools in a variety of ways. Just as you would expect there to be a difference in your treatment and care from a government hospital to a private hospital such as Mercy Gilbert or Banner Gateway, you would expect to see differences between public and private schools. A Christian school should be salt and light to a world whose eyes are closed to the darkness which surrounds it. One of those differences is in how we look at, treat, and education our students.

When we educate, train, correct, encourage, and teach, we build upon basic principles which are held to dearly. The idea that all students are able to learn is a key component. A part of that component is all students are unique learners. Continuing on this theme we actively work with students who have physical, mental, and/or social impairments to their education. I would add to this last principle that the majority of students entering our school have some impairment. These may include attitude, confidence, lack of skills, and work ethic. While these impairments usually do not have a label attached or federal funding, they are consistently as big or bigger an impairment as the typical labels of learning disabilities or ADHD.

We also believe segregating students because of stigmatizing labels is harmful and of no educational use in working towards the goal of increasing a student’s skills.

School wide we meet the needs of a diverse student population through a well thought out, richly developed, consistently trained education system. Our experience for over fourteen years has shown this idea to be consistently successful – at our first model Surrey Garden Christian, and now our second effort Bios Christian Academy. From kindergarten through twelfth grade all students are integrated in a challenging, individualized learning environment.

In this educational system, diverse educational extremes may be actively addressed in the same classroom. High school math students with skills below a beginning second grade student’s grow significantly in their math skills along side high school calculus students. Teachers are trained how to set baseline information and how to break instruction and specific skills into blocks of learning in order for students to progress.

Since President Ford’s signing into law P.L. 94-142 (signing with concern) the segregation of students in public/government school has increased at a higher rate than the general school enrollment since 1998. The educational model the law is built around is a medical model of identifying a problem with a student and attempting to fix it. The thinking behind the labels (emotionally, mentally handicapped, learning disabled, etc.) when first introduced was that someday there would be a specific method for instructing each label. Specific methods of instruction would probably be different for each area or label. This specific method of instruction would probably be different for each area or label. What works for the mentally handicapped may or may not work for learning disabilities. Research would pave the way to showing us what is best.

It didn’t work that way. There was no one method specific to each handicap. On the contrary, research overwhelmingly demonstrated that each student was unique in his or her own way, in their needs, and how to instruct them.

There is a movement nationally to change the prevailing idea of a medical model which fixes the educational problems of the student to a social model which says “the educational difficulties experienced by disabled children in the regular classroom are not necessarily caused by their individual impairments, but might rather be the result of a poorly developed regular education system. . .”

Returning to our school, Bios Christian Academy, one of the basic principles of our school is to not segregate because of ability, lack of or increased. It is another reason our students have been successful for over fourteen years. It is one more way we set ourselves apart from public schools.