On Special Education

The National Center on Educational Outcomes, a federally funded center that provides "national leadership in the participation of students with disabilities in national and state assessments, standards-setting efforts, and graduation requirements," is promoting a number of new reports available on its Web site.

I'll be examining these reports more closely for potential story ideas, but here are a few that jumped out:

States’ Alternate Assessments Based on Modified Achievement Standards (AA-MAS) in 2007: NCEO doesn't try to assess the quality of these tests, which can be given to 2 percent of students who are capable of learning grade-level content, but not as fast as their peers. But it does offer a snapshot of which states had created them (as of July 2007) and what the tests look like.

Revisiting Graduation Requirements and Diploma Options for Youth with Disabilities: A National Study: One conclusion in the report is that states do not fully know what the impact of changing graduation requirements will be on students with disabilities, particularly any requirements that students pass a series of tests in order to earn a regular diploma.

English Language Learners with Disabilities in State English Language Proficiency Assessments: A Review of State Accommodation Policies: How do states handle testing students who are learning English and who also have disabilities? This paper brings up some promising practices and issues.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 4:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Among the most well-attended sessions at last year's huge Council for Exceptional Children convention were talks on co-teaching: bringing general education and special education teachers together in one classroom to focus on the instruction of children with special learning needs.

Educators in co-teaching arrangements stressed that in order to work well, such partnerships require focus, planning, even a little chemistry. I saw this in person when I visited co-taught classrooms in San Antonio; one pair of teachers I met worked so well together they were practically able to finish one another's sentences. They were up front in saying they were concerned that neither of them had the experience they needed to make co-teaching work, but the school and district were committed to the process, and so were they. Now, their classroom runs so smoothly that I doubt the children know that one is a general educator, and the other is trained in special education.

This month, Michelle Rhee, the chancellor of the District of Columbia schools, said she would like to turn an entire school into a "differentiated learning lab," where children in special education, children who are gifted, and children with "regular" learning needs would all be served in the same classroom.

D.C. has had enduring problems with its special education program. The district bleeds money to private providers either because it doesn't have the appropriate programs for students, or is unable to meet the demands of due-process procedures. So, part of the rationale driving this proposal is a need to increase capacity for special-needs students.

But, while many students in special education are best served in a inclusive environment, that's not the best place for all of them. (The Washington Post article states that federal law "requires" inclusion in schools and that's not quite right; the law mandates only that student be educated in the least restrictive environment that is most appropriate for that learner.)

And I'm also curious about the proposal that a private company come in to provide the special education services. Would that system foster the partnership among teachers that seems to be necessary for success?

On the other hand, individualized instruction for all students is a powerful idea. I'm interested in hearing from educators who are familiar with co-teaching. What do you think of Rhee's proposal?

Posted by Christina Samuels at 3:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Perhaps the question mark betrays my reporterly skepticism. I must admit that when I heard about an ABC World News story on a nonberbal 13-year-old girl with autism who was now using a computer to express herself eloquently, I thought, hmm, is this "facilitated communication?"

I know that assistive devices can be tremendously helpful for children who cannot speak. But facilitated communication, where a helper in some cases supports the hand of the person who is disabled, has had a rockier history. A critical 1993 Frontline story on the issue said that in at least some cases, the facilitator was subtly guiding the hand of the person who was supposed to be typing the words. My colleague Debra Viadero wrote a longer piece about facilitated communication, also in 1993. Some people may also be familiar with the technique because it was used with Sue Rubin, the subject of a short documentary, "Autism is a World," nominated for an Oscar in 2005.

Facilitated communication advocates have responded to the criticism with a list of studies that offer support for the method.

The ABC story clearly touched a nerve. The network received so much attention that it aired a follow-up a day after the original story. Both segments depicted the teenager, Carly Fleischmann, typing without any physical assistance. In an online conversation, Carly's parents say they have never used facilitated communication with her. They have, however, paid for 25 to 40 hours a week on intensive behavioral and speech therapy for their daughter since she was a toddler.

For educators, perhaps the most important lesson is in the last statement: parents, therapists, and teachers must be ever-creative in helping children with autism "find their voice."

Posted by Christina Samuels at 4:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

And what they've said is, they want to know about response to intervention.

I lost track of the total number of questions I screened for yesterday's online chat about RTI after counting about 100. The panelists did a great job of fielding as many as they could, but to get to all of them would have required another few hours.

Judging from the inquiries, there's a lot of interest in how RTI might work for older students, for English-language learners, and for students struggling in academic subjects other than reading. Educators also want some reassurance that they're doing RTI the "right way." There really is not a one-size fits all" framework for starting response to intervention in a school or district; the personality of each school plays a huge part in effective implementation.

But I hope to write about more solid examples of RTI used with different subjects, and in different types of schools. Any suggestions on good places to profile?

Posted by Christina Samuels at 4:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Be sure to tune in to the Education Week website at 2 p.m. EST Feb. 20 for an online "chat" I'm moderating on response to intervention. Two researchers and two school principals will be taking questions from readers. I'll update this post with a link to the transcript once the discussion is over.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 7:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

San Francisco-based school psychologist Rebecca Bell has a hilarious entry called "The Newbie" on her blog, Notes from the School Psychologist. In it, she offers words of wisdom to other new school psychologists out there:

New psychs: Be patient. It took FOUR years to get the staff on board with the idea that we didn’t need to refer every child with academic or behavioral needs to special education “just to rule out a disability.” I had so much paperwork involved when there was an inappropriate referral it was ridiculous. Some parents didn’t even know that what they signed was permission for testing. One parent’s kid had a 4.0 and that kid was referred because she "talked out in class." Another kid was referred and he had been tested 6 months prior and didn’t qualify.

That's only one of several useful posts on this blog; one post on ways to de-escalate conflict with a defiant student was particularly interesting.

I'd like to know how the role of the school psychologist may be changing, especially with the advent of "response to intervention" as a technique for addressing learning problems early in young students. School psychologists have the reputation of being the people who give IQ tests to children in order to place them in special education, but obviously they do more. Is the job description evolving?

Posted by Christina Samuels at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Response to intervention for young elementary students is starting to take off, and now preschool educators are getting in on the act, thanks to an initiative from the New York City-based National Center for Learning Disabilities and the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, based at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

NCLD made a recent trip to Capitol Hill to introduce congressional staff to a response-to-intervention type process for preschoolers called "recognition and response." At the same time, they explained that NCLD has been promoting a key element of recognition and response, early screening, through a center-backed initiative called Get Ready to Read!

Recognition and response uses some of the same techniques as RTI, but geared toward the younger child. In RTI, teachers use a series of assessments to monitor the academic performance of students. If students need help in certain areas based on their response to those assessments, they receive targeted, scientifically based interventions.

In the Get Ready to Read! program, parents or teachers use a 10-minute screening tool intended to gauge the literacy readiness of 4-year-olds. If the results show that the children need some help mastering the basics, the program offers a variety of skill-building exercises that can be done by parents and teachers.

None of the questions on the screening tool require that a child be able to read. However, to score well, children do have to know the difference between letters and numbers, and they have to be able to identify letters and the sounds that they make. The screening tool is offered in English and Spanish and is available online for free, or in a paper version, published by Pearson Early Learning. The skill-building activities are also free online.

I took the test, which gives detailed instructions on how the test should be administered, including what to say if children ask for help or point to more than one answer. My 13-out-of-20 score (with some intentional wrong answers) shows that I've mastered preliteracy basics!

Optimally, the tool would be administered at the beginning and end of a 4-year-old's preschool year, so that parents and teachers can see a child's progress over time, said Karen Golembeski, the project director for 6-year-old program.

There have not been large-scale studies done of the program, but an evaluation of demonstration sites in the Atlanta area showed that sites that used the screening tool and skill-building activities resulted in 69 percent of the children having the skills they needed to enter kindergarten, compared with 35 percent of the children whose preschools did not use the screening tool or the activities.

In addition, there is some research that shows a correlation between a child's performance on the screening tool and his or her performance on a Georgia reading test administered in 1st grade.

Get Ready to Read! is not intended to diagnose learning disabilities, Golembeski cautioned. Parents with those concerns should seek additional guidance and evaluations. But the center is hearing from preschool teachers that the program helps them know more about each child, and the skill-building exercises fit easily into a preschool day and offer ideas for parents to use at home.

"We're thrilled with the response," she said.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 3:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Reading Rockets, an educational initiative of the public television station in the Washington area, has a nice, easy-to-read web page about accessible instructional materials. Though the guide is written for parents, teachers and administrators could also find this information valuable.

IDEA 2004 requires textbook companies to adhere to a certain technical standard (the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard, or NIMAS) when they create the source files that are used to create textbooks.

This digital source file can then be used to produce the standard textbooks we all know and love, as well as Braille versions, audio versions, large-print editions, and other instructional materials that would be useful for students who need help accessing printed materials. Using just one standard means that schools don't have to cope with a variety of different technologies when they're requesting Braille or large-print books for a blind student, for example.

Right now, accessible books are so hard to produce that students may wait months for appropriate instructional materials.

The Center for Applied Special Technology has received funding from the U.S. Department of Education to establish technical assistance centers for NIMAS. The center also created and promotes an educational concept called universal design for learning, which suggests that technology should be used to create accessible learning materials for all types of learners, not just those who have problems with print.

Thanks to the Charles Fox's Special Education Law Blog for pointing out the Reading Rockets site.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 9:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

They may have other policy differences, but when it comes to special education, Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and Republican John McCain all want the same thing for states--more money.

My colleague Michele McNeil has already written in her lively blog about Clinton's pledge to "fully-fund" the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

That gets into a tricky area. In 1975, when IDEA first was passed as the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, the law said that the federal government would eventually kick in to the states 40 percent of the nationwide average cost of educating a student. (Look at how relatively brief the special education law was, originally! Those were the days.)

The feds have never met that standard, though, despite stated intentions and "glide paths" and other attempts at meeting that 40 percent standard. President Bush's proposed fiscal 2009 budget would provide to states grants equal to about 17 percent of the average cost of educating a student.

McCain says the government's failure to meet the 40 percent funding threshold is a "disgrace." Check out his comments at a New Hampshire forum when he was asked about the topic by a mother of two children with autism:

McCain's wife, Cindy, has a master's degree in special education from the University of Southern California, and she's come up more than once when McCain is asked about education topics.

As for Obama, his disability plan fact sheet also includes a charge to fully-fund the law.

So, good news, right? The only problem is that no one makes it entirely clear where the money is going to come from. The 17 percent funding in Bush's proposed budget amounts to $11.3 billion in grants to states. More than doubling that percentage (and adding new programs, in the case of Clinton's and Obama's overall education proposals) adds up to real money. Do you think the candidates, once elected, will finally be able to achieve this goal?

Posted by Christina Samuels at 5:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (2)

This must feel familiar to those in the gifted education field: Every year that the Bush administration has created a budget, it has proposed eliminating the Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Program, the only federally funded program specifically directed toward enhancing the ability of schools to meet these students' special education needs. And every year, the program has been maintained through Congressional action.

This year is no excepton. The fiscal 2009 budget released earlier this week by the White House proposed eliminating the Javits program and 46 others. Compared to the $59.8 billion in discretionary spending proposed for the Education Department, the $7.5 million Javits program is tiny. But eliminating Javits and other "ineffective" programs would free up nearly $3.3 billion that could be better spent on other programs, the administration says.

The rationale for eliminating Javits is that states generally bear the costs of gifted education, and Javits is too small to make much of a difference. Jane Clarenbach, the director of public education for the National Association for Gifted Children in Washington, has heard that before.To her, it makes no sense to devote money to programs that promote Advanced Placement courses or math and sciences without offering federal support for gifted education. The lack of federal funding also serves to keep gifted education mainly in affluent districts, where the tax base can support enrichment efforts. Poorer districts can't do that without more money, she said.

"For an unknown reason, this is seen as a population of children that is not worthy of federal support," she said.

But the Javits program does have some powerful friends, including Sen. Charles E. Grassley, a Republican from Iowa. Last year, as part of the immigration bill that eventually stalled in Congress, he proposed increasing the amount that businesses pay the government for "skilled worker" visas and using part of the money as a permanent funding stream for the Javits program. Grassley's contention was that the visas are used to bring foreign skilled workers to the country, and it seems logical that at least part of the money be used to teach homegrown skilled workers of the future.

Business interests have fought increases in visa fees, and the amendments have not yet come to fruition, but Grassley has told supporters he's not giving up. "I have absolute confidence we'll see it again," Clarenbach said.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Journal News, based in White Plains, N.Y., recently ran a nice article about a therapy dog that has apparently prompted wonderful results in a classroom of children with special learning needs. One 6-year-old with selective mutism -- a social anxiety disorder that prevented him from speaking -- apparently broke his silence just so he could talk to his mother about Boo, a 7-year-old Labrador mix.

Therapy dogs have had a long history in schools, but they are not universally accepted, for a variety of reasons. A few years ago, I wrote about a family that wanted their specially-trained therapy dog to be a part of their daughter's individualized education program, because giving the dog commands helped the child improve her speech. The school said no. The always-interesting National School Boards Association blog, "Board Buzz," wrote a piece in 2004 about a superintendent who got hounded (forgive me) for not allowing a dog that was specially trained to note the onset of seizures attend school with a student who has epilepsy.

So I'm glad to bring attention to a happy ending. There's only one thing missing from the Journal News article though -- words from the child in question! If the therapy dog has been so successful in getting this young child to speak, I'd love to know just what he's talking about.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 5:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

An article I wrote recently about New Jersey shifting the burden of proof in individualized education program hearings is generating a lot of thoughtful reader comments.

The issue: When a school creates an IEP for a student and the provisions of the plan are disputed, who has to prove their case? Does the school have to prove that it is doing the right thing, or do the parents have to prove that the school's plan is wrong? In 2005, the Supreme Court decided in the case Schaffer v. Weast that, in the absence of any other state law, the "party seeking relief" should always have the burden of proof. Practically speaking, the ruling means that it's the parents' job to prove that the school is wrong, because parents are most likely to be the party seeking relief.

New Jersey, however, recently passed a law stating that no matter who is complaining about the IEP, it's the school's job to prove that its plan is appropriate for the child.

You can read more of the details in the article. Feel free to join the lengthy conversation that is already taking place in the comments appended to the bottom of the story, or to talk about the topic here.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The No Child Left Behind Act has to offer a way for general education teachers to receive professional development so they can teach students with special needs effectively, said three researchers that I interviewed as part of a story on a study by the National Council on Disability, "The No Child Left Behind Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act: A Progress Report."

Considering all the information that the presidential advisory council compiled for its report, I found it interesting that this issue came up repeatedly.

"When it comes down to the school level, that's the challenge. They're the ones who have to make it happen," said Watson Scott Swail, the president of the Eductional Policy Institute in Virginia Beach, Va. His organization, along with the American Youth Policy Forum, conducted the study for the council.

Betsy Brand, the director of AYPF, said this becomes more important as larger numbers of students with disabilities are included in general education classes. Special education teachers get specific training on how to present instruction in a variety of ways, but the general education teachers need those skills too. "I don't think that most of our general education training comes from that perspective," she told me.

Martin Gould, the director of research and technology for the council, believes the issue may have been obscured in some of the early conversations about reauthorizing NCLB. Elementary teachers seem to fare a little better in their ability to present information to different types of learners, but all teachers need to have the skill, he said.

What do teachers think? Do general education teachers feel prepared to meet the needs of all the different types of students they may see in their classrooms? Is there a way to incorporate this kind of professional development into NCLB? Check out the report, especially the parts that focus on "capacity building," and let me know what you think.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 12:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)