On Special Education

A new study of prekindergartners found that gathering information on children's skills and providing targeted interventions to those who need supports to learn, is a successful strategy that teachers could accurately implement.

The study is the first to look at a new approach to teaching pre-K students, called "Recognition & Response," which is based on Response to Intervention methods, said researchers at the FPG Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The researchers found that a target group of students who received language and literacy interventions made greater gains than their classmates at skills including: letter naming, vocabulary, sound awareness, and print knowledge. The target group made gains at the same rate as their classmates on other language and literacy skills, the study said.

The study also showed that pre-K teachers could successfully implement the approach with a 97 percent rate of accuracy. Also, 92 percent of the teachers reported that they would recommend the R & R approach to other teachers.

The study followed 353 4-year-olds in 24 child-care, Head Start, and public pre-K classrooms in Maryland and Florida. The pre-K teachers conducted universal screenings on every child throughout the year. The results were used to select a target group of four children in each classroom who then received a language and literacy intervention in a small group for 15 minutes a day for two months.

"We are encouraged by this significant finding about the efficacy of progress monitoring and tiered intervention in prekindergarten," said Ellen Peisner-Feinberg, the project's principal investigator. "We expect this to be the first of many findings in a growing body of research that will help the field of pre-K education more precisely meet the needs of young children."

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Bill Knudsen, the acting director of the federal office of special education programs, earned applause this week when he told a group of early childhood educators that Obama's education transition team has early childhood education as one of its top priorities.

"They are great, intelligent folks who have a great outlook," Knudsen said to the 500 people gathered for this week's National Early Childhood Conference, sponsored by the National Early Childhood Technical Assistance Center. These are the people who implement Part C of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which deals with infants and toddlers, and Section 619 of the IDEA, which provides funding to preschools for students with disabilities.

"One of the great things about disability policy is that it's really a bipartisan issue," Knudsen told the group. The transition team has presented Patricia Guard, the deputy director of OSEP, with pages of questions, Mr. Knudsen said Tuesday. But the department's professionals don't mind the extra work.

"It is our goal to make this transition as seamless as possible," he said. Even though there may not be a permanent leaders of the federal departments that oversee special education for several months, "as we pass the baton, we're working hand in glove" with the transition team, he said. "We have a seasoned group of folks, and we've done this before."

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That was the question posed to participants in a session held this week as part of the National Early Childhood Conference, sponsored by NECTAC -- the federally funded National Early Childhood Technical Assistance Center.

You can also offer your thoughts on the issue here, on the Web site of the National Professional Development Center on Inclusion, based at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The researchers there have created a draft document and a survey to gather responses, and the goal is to get responses from as many stakeholders as possible.

Part B of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which deals with school-aged children, gets the lion's share of attention (and most of the federal funding for special education). But there's another part of the law, Part C, which relates to early intervention programs for infants and toddlers. And yet another section of the special education law, Section 619, provides grants for preschool programs for children with disabilities aged 3 to 5. This week's conference brings together coordinators of these various programs, parents, and other people involved in early childhood education.

According to the professional development center, the number of children ages 3 to 5 with disabilities in regular classrooms is increasing. Early intervention is key to keeping these children from slipping far behind their peers. Professional development for early childhood educators, however, has not kept up. According to the inclusion center:

... while early intervention and special education is part of the mission of many programs, coursework and training often fall short. The majority of early childhood personnel are not adequately prepared to modify teaching methods and curriculum to ensure full participation of children with disabilities.

There is a national need for an integrated, cross-sector system of professional development to define what is meant by highly qualified personnel in inclusive settings.

Early childhood educators can find a lot of information on the Web site of the early childhood inclusion center, including multimedia presentations, handouts and research summaries.

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