May 2009 Archives

Many of you may already be familiar with the Government Accountability Office, the congressional "watchdog" agency that recently released a report on restraints and seclusion.

Less well-known is the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, which communicates directly with Congress. Though funded with taxpayer dollars, that office's reports are not made available to the public in the same way that GAO reports are. To get them, you have to request them from your congressional office—assuming that you know what report to ask for, because there is no centralized list of all the CRS reports that are available unless you're willing to pay a hefty fee to agencies that compile this information.

Jim Gerl, the writer of the Special Education Law Blog, mentioned in a recent post that the CRS issued reports recently on important court decisions that have been made since the reauthorization of IDEA in 2004. The report addresses issues such as:

• What amount of educational progress is required to meet FAPE standards?
• What educational benefits are required to be put in an individualized education program (IEP)?
• What use of seclusion and restraints is allowed (if any) under IDEA?
• Are all settlement agreements enforceable in federal court or only those reached through dispute resolution or mediation?
• Does the Supreme Court’s decision in Arlington Central School District v. Murphy (pdf) correctly deny reimbursement for expert witness fees?
• Does there need to be more detailed guidance on systemic compliance complaints?

This 25-page, April 14 report, "The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA): Supreme Court and Selected Lower Court Decisions," is on the Web site of the National School Boards Association here (scroll down to the appropriate link, which is a PDF file.) The NSBA page also includes a link to an April 14 CRS report on the topic of seclusion and restraints.

The case law report is particularly interesting because it includes many lower-court rulings, not just the Supreme Court cases that tend to get the most media attention. And, as the NSBA notes, the questions raised in the report could indicate future areas of interest for legislation. IDEA reauthorization may be a long way off, but that doesn't mean congressional staffers aren't already pondering the issues.

I thank NSBA for its commitment to transparency; these reports are not classified, and we as taxpayers have already paid for them. Apparently CRS takes very seriously its role to serve Congress only, but Congress also serves us, even if not all lawmakers believe these reports should be widely released.

Some other organizations exist to collect CRS reports that have been provided to them by others who believe the information should be in the public domain. If you search for IDEA or "disabilities" at Open CRS or WikiLeaks, you can find older CRS reports compiled there.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 1:00 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

This New York Times article caught my eye because the couple in the lead are—or were—planning to be special education teachers:

When a Kentucky agency cut back its program to forgive student loans for schoolteachers, Travis B. Gay knew he and his wife, Stephanie—both special-education teachers—were in trouble.

“We’d gotten married in June and bought a house, pretty much planned our whole life,” said Mr. Gay, 26. Together, they had about $100,000 in student loans that they expected the program to help them repay over five years.

Then, he said, “we get a letter in the mail saying that our forgiveness this year was next to nothing.”

The story goes on to say that such forgiveness programs, which are usually used to lure people into high-need professions, like education, are falling victim to the bad economy. Will this cause even more of a special education teacher shortage than there already is?

Posted by Christina Samuels at 1:20 PM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

Slowly, the Education Department is starting to fill out its top ranks. Just yesterday, it announced the names of nine new education officials, which you can read about here on the Politics K-12 blog.

But there's been nothing but silence, so far, on the appointment of a new assistant secretary for the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services. Right now, the office is headed by Andrew J. Pepin, an executive administrator "delegated the authority to perform the functions of Assistant Secretary for OSERS."

One of the branches of OSERS is the Office of Special Education Programs, which is pretty hot right now, considering all the interest in federal special education stimulus funding and local "maintenance of effort." Right now that department is being led by acting director Patricia J. Guard.

Months ago, I heard Connie Garner, the policy director for disability and special populations for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's office, was a possible OSERS pick. Her body of work proves her familiarity with the issues; in addition to being a parent of a child with a disability, she also did a great deal of work on the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 2004.

But since then, leaks have been few and far between. The word is now that Garner is busy working on health care reform. Would the department seek to bring back Judy Heumann, a former OSERS assistant secretary now with the District of Columbia's Department on Disability Services? Might the department try to lure Alexa Posny back to Washington? Now the education commissioner in Kansas, Posny served for a time as the director of OSEP, and was known (at least, to me) for her really amusing PowerPoint presentations. Trust me, it's hard to weave humor into presentations on federal special education policy, but she did a good job of it.

Do you have some tips? What kind of person would you like to see in these offices? Feel free to leave a comment.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 4:37 PM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

While I was away, the Government Accountability Office released its report (pdf) on restraints and seclusion used on students. What was noteworthy to me was what how much the government does not know: There are no federal policies on the use of such techniques, and there is not one entity that collects information on all of these cases, though the GAO found hundreds of cases of alleged abuse over the past 20 years.

Though there's no nationwide recordkeeping, a handful of states keep their own statistics on how often restraints and seclusion were used on students. According to the GAO report, from September 2007 to June 2008, Texas officials said they restrained 4,202 students 18,741 times. During the same time period, California officials said they used restraints, seclusion, or emergency interventions 14,354 times on an unspecified number of students.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan also made a statement before the House Education and Labor Committee, after the GAO report was released:

The attention on restraint and seclusion may leave some educators wondering what they can do to work with children with severe behavior problems.The blog Disability Scoop has a couple of useful entries on how to address problem behaviors in children, both here and here.

Written by Deborah Lipsky, a counselor who also has autism, they offer some insights in dealing with challenging problems, though it's clear to me that children with entrenched behavior problems are not going to be "fixed" overnight. But restraining 4,200 children more than 18,000 times—which indicates that at least some children are being restrained again and again—doesn't seem to be fixing any problems, either.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 11:33 AM | Permalink | 3 Comments | Recommend

I'll be returning May 26. See you then!

Posted by Christina Samuels at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

There's information about stimulus spending all over the place, but sometimes it can be hard to figure out where the best resources are. Here's a list of some of the links I find myself turning to frequently when I'm writing federal stimulus and special education stories:

The original fact sheet for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009: IDEA Recovery Funds for Services to Children and Youths with Disabilities

The first guidance document from the Department of Education: Implementing the Recovery Act, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Part B (pdf)

A document that came out a few days after the original guidance, explaining some more provisions related to maintenance of effort: Implementing the Recovery Act, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Part B, Guidance Modifications (pdf)

The Council for Exceptional Children has put out a great Q&A document: How the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Impacts Special Education and Early Intervention

And of course, it never hurts to go right back to the source, the 2004 Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, statute and regulations. This site has a decent search function (Part C information has been "coming soon" for years, though.) But you never have to take someone else's word for it when it comes to provisions in the law.

Are there other good resources that special education people should be aware of?

Posted by Christina Samuels at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Candace Cortiella, executive director of The Advocacy Institute and friend of the blog, has told me about a new project of hers, IDEA Money Watch. The Web site will attempt to track how states use the $12.2 billion in stimulus funding that is coming to them over the next two years.

Cortiella has given Maryland a special commendation for pulling together easy-to-follow information on the performance of every district in the state. As mandated by the federal government, districts are ranked on performance indicators in four categories: meets requirements, needs assistance, needs intervention, needs substantial intervention.

Any district that is not ranked as "meets requirements" has some restrictions on how it can spend its stimulus dollars. (See April 13 U.S. Department of Education guidance here.)

To get an idea of what Maryland has done--and what other states SHOULD do, in the name of transparency--click here.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Some technical glitches affected the Web site the federal government was using to collect comments on disability research. So, the public participation portion of the comment period has been extended, but only until May 15.

(I wrote about this previously here.)

The public-comment period was separated into two parts. During the first part, which is now over, various "stakeholders" were asked to submit research priorities. The second half, which is the part that has been extended, allows people to read through all the submissions and "vote up" the ones they consider to be the most important.

I received an e-mail reminder today from the agency handling this, the Interagency Committee on Disability Research:

As we indicated previously, the voting was suspended on April 23 to modify the database application due to the overwhelming number of recommendations. If you voted previously, it will be necessary to recast your votes during the new one-week timeframe: May 8-15, 2009. We apologize for this inconvenience and encourage you to return to the site to vote for your research priorities.

It sounds like any votes submitted previously were lost, so be sure to resubmit them and let the agency know what you think should be a priority.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 4:52 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Education and Labor has scheduled a hearing May 19 on the topic of restraint and seclusion and students with disabilities.

Witnesses have yet to be announced, according to this notice of the hearing, but I would suspect that at least one representative will be from the National Disability Rights Network, which released a report in January on this issue.

I wonder if the timing of the hearing means that the General Accountability Office report on retraints and seclusion that I referenced in this recent article is soon to appear?

Posted by Christina Samuels at 4:44 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Just as many children may have trouble writing words as reading them, according a study in the May 2009 issue of Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The authors titled their paper "The Forgotten Learning Disability" because they say there have been no epidemiological studies of how frequently writing disorders occur. According to their work, the prevalence of writing disorders ranged from about 7 percent to 14 percent in the group of children they studied, depending on what formula the researchers used.

Boys were two to three more times likely to be affected than girls. And there was a lot of overlap with reading disabilities, though interestingly, about 25 percent of the affected children didn't have an additional reading disorder.

The full study is available for purchase here. A short news article on the subject is here.

I'm aware of any number of lesson plans that are created to treat children with dyslexia. Is writing usually a part of the practice? There's such a large overlap between the two groups that it seems worthwhile to address both issues in tandem.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 2:53 PM | Permalink | 4 Comments | Recommend

Educators who are interested in reading all my response-to-intervention stories in one place can now purchase a package of articles for $4.95, part of Education Week's new "Spotlight On..." product.

In these articles, I tried to focus both on the theory behind response to intervention and practical issues of implementation in the real world of schools. The package also includes a transcript of a great online discussion between Judy Elliott, of the L.A. Unified School District and Douglas Fuchs, of Vanderbilt University, both top-notch experts on RTI who have been sources for me on more than one occasion.

I am sure you will learn something new about RTI from reading these stories. And, I'd like to throw out a question to readers: What other questions do you have about RTI? I've covered the high school angle, the elementary school angle, federal perspective, local perspective...but I'm sure there's many more questions to be asked.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 3:08 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The federal Institute of Education Sciences recently released a practice guide for educators who would like to know some of the best practices for using a response to intervention framework for math education.

(You can learn more about response to intervention as a whole here and here.)

The guide (pdf) does not offer an endorsement of any particular program. Instead, it talks about the features that a good response to intervention program should have.

For example, one recommendation is that at least 10 minutes of an intervention session should be built on reinforcing retrieval of basic arithmetic facts. Weak arithmetic skills makes it harder to teach students more advanced concepts, the guide said. The guide also includes a number of examples and sample questions, which should make it a good resource for teachers and trainers.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 5:57 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

My colleagues over at Politics K-12 are blogging that the perenially endangered Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Program has been stripped from the U.S. Department of Education's proposed budget.

This $7 million program provides grants to researchers looking for better ways to identify and teach gifted and talented children. President Bush tried repeatedly to eliminate the program, but it managed to survive.

Supporters say the federal program is needed to help identify ethnically and socioeconomically diverse gifted students, who otherwise might be overlooked by their school districts.

A favorable description of the Javits program can be found on the National Association for Gifted Children Web site here.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 4:11 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Education Secretary Arne Duncan has started a 15-state "listening tour" on No Child Left Behind, and during his first visit, to rural West Virginia, he heard from a special education teacher:

Reichard told Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Tuesday that she works all year long to boost the self-esteem of mentally impaired students at Bunker Hill Elementary, only to see them fall apart over standardized tests.

"They feel so good about themselves, and then they look at a two-paragraph reading passage, and they know six words," Reichard said. "I have one child here that's a nonreader, and she's going to have to take the test, and she's going to cry.

Is Duncan offering a hint of what might be coming in NCLB and testing of students with disabilities? His response to this teacher was that her story was an example of how the federal government should be "looser" with how states meet goals. This will be a theme to watch.

The Education Department says these meetings will be taped and summaries will be published on the department's website. A synopsis of the West Virginia trip isn't available yet, but some pictures of the trip are here.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 7:09 PM | Permalink | 14 Comments | Recommend

Could people with autism have a larger-that-typical amygdala?

(Don't run to your dictionaries -- the amygdala is a brain structure commonly linked with the storage of emotional memories. Amygdala means almond-shaped, and this cluster of nuclei has that appearance.)

Researchers at the University of North Carolina say that toddlers with autism seem more likely to have a large amygdala, and the enlargement is seen in children as young as two years old. If that turns out to be a consistent finding, it may help guide early intervention for children with autism.

This brain abnormality appears to be tied to the ability to share attention and experiences with others, the team said.

"This study adds clarification to a potential fundamental brain mechanism underlying social deficits in autism. It provides potential insights into how this behavior develops," said lead researcher Dr. Joseph Piven, a professor of psychiatry.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 6:58 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend