On Special Education

I was hoping that Implementation Study of Smaller Learning Communities: Final Report (pdf) released Monday by the U.S. Department of Education might have some tidbits about how these school structures have affected students with disabilities. The federal government provided funding to districts so that they could start these programs. And, if the idea is to break large, impersonal schools down into nurturing structures that cater to individual students' needs, students in special education would seem to be an ideal audience.

But, no luck. The only information about students with disabilities contained in the report, which examined 119 small schools in 2002 and 2003, is that they tend to have fewer students with disabilities on a percentage basis than do large high schools overall. About 61 percent of large high schools have a population of 10 to 15 percent students with disabilities, compared with 36 percent of small schools.

The small schools also reported needing more resources for special education: 49 percent said there was "some need" for more special education resources, while 13 percent said there was a "great need."

The study's authors note that the results focused mainly on school structure. Only limited information was available on student outcomes.

Others people have serious problems with small schools and how they enroll students with disabilities. From an article I wrote last year about the small schools movement in New York City:

...school size is no excuse for not offering services mandated under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, said David C. Bloomfield, a professor and the head of the educational leadership program at Brooklyn College, a branch of the City University of New York. Mr. Bloomfield, the past president of New York’s Citywide Council on High Schools, has been an outspoken critic of the enrollment policy at the small schools...

New York officials tout the success of the small schools, which have higher graduation rates than other schools in the city, but those that enroll special-needs students accept children whose disabilities aren’t very serious, Mr. Bloomfield said.

Then the schools “wave a banner of success,” he said, “when they have a thumb on the scale in their favor.”

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Board Buzz, the blog of the National School Board Association, brings news of an upcoming audio conference titled "Special Education: What's On the Horizon?"

The conference is scheduled for 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. EST April 16, and includes some well-known special education law experts, including Houston-based school attorney Christopher Borreca and Allan Osborne, a principal and former president of the Education Law Association. Regular registration is $140, but some discounts are offered and for the price, you can gather as many people as you want around a speaker phone to hear the presentation.

Here's my prediction: Response to intervention is going to generate due-process hearings, and maybe even lawsuits, unless districts do a good job explaining the educational method to parents. There's already grumbling among some parents that the RTI process takes too long to get their children the specific extra help they need. However, I admit that I'm not going out on a limb: The Washington Post (registration required) and the Wall Street Journal have already written about this topic.

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Kudos to Rachel A. Holler, the principal of Stewart Middle School in Norristown, Pa., and go-to special education law expert Perry A. Zirkel of Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., for a recent research article that attempts to take a crack at quantifying just how many "section 504" kids are in public schools. Their work has been published in the March issue of the National Association for Secondary School Principals Bulletin.

But first, a quick primer on "Section 504:" Section 504, a part of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, actually predates the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act by two years. It prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities by organizations that receive federal money, like schools. One major difference between the two laws is how "disability" is defined. IDEA has 13 disability categories, while Section 504 has a three-part definition that is broader than IDEA. So, though all students covered by IDEA are also covered by Section 504, there's also a smaller group of Section 504 kids who are not a part of IDEA.

Confused yet?

Another major difference is in funding: The federal government provides some money to school districts to educate children in special education, along with a specific legal framework for doing so. Accommodations for Section 504 students is a mandate, but does not come with specific federal funding.

Holler and Zirkel extrapolate their results from 549 surveys sent to public schools. Among the nuggets of information they uncovered:

• 504-only students represent about 1.2 percent of the population covered by the survey.


• Districts may be inflating even that small percentage, based on recent judicial opinions that have restricted the definition of a 504 impairment.


• Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder was the most commonly listed impairment for Section 504 students. Diabetes came next.


• There was no significant difference in the number of Section 504-only students in a wealthy school compared to a less affluent school.


• High schools and middle schools had significantly more Section 504-only students than elementary schools.

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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.

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The reauthorization of No Child Left Behind may have stalled, but that's not stopping education groups from trying to mold the law in their favor.

One of the latest suggestions for an amendment, backed by the National Association of State Directors of Special Education, would start a pilot program to allow "out-of-level testing" for students with disabilities. The chief sponsor of H.R. 4100 is Rep. Lynn Woolsey, a Democrat from California. The bill is sitting in committee.

Under the pilot program, a 6th grade student reading at a 3rd grade level could take a 3rd grade reading test. This wouldn't count for adequate yearly progress, the bill states--the results would just be studied to see how fast the students in the pilot move toward grade-level proficiency.

Nancy Reder, the governmental relations head for NASDSE, was straightforward in saying that her organization wasn't trying to drum up support among disability advocacy groups. (She already knows they won't like it. Teachers won't push toward grade-level standards if the tests aren't there to hold them responsible, these groups believe.)

The U.S. Department of Education also has come down against out-of-grade-level testing. Even the "2 percent tests" that states are allowed to administer to slower learners must measure grade-level standards, although with simpler language and less complex problems than the regular grade-level tests.

"We support high expectations for students with disabilities, but there needs to be an element of realism in how kids are assessed," Reder said. And giving a grade-level assessment to students who are clearly behind is meaningless, she said.

"We're more interested in teaching kids where they are," she said.

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It's safe to say that school organizations are still stung by a federal decision made in December to stop reimbursing schools for some of the services schools provide to students with disabilities. (See my last story on this topic here.)

When schools offer programs like speech or occupational therapy to low-income students, Medicaid pays them back. However, the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, the government agency responsible for administering Medicaid, decided to cut out reimbursements for getting those kids to school. School is primarily an educational setting, the agency said. The government also won't pay school personnel for the administrative costs of managing its Medicaid programs. School districts say they have to bear these costs no matter what, so cutting out the reimbursements takes a big chunk out of their budgets.

The CMS made these changes by publishing new rules. In late December, Congress stepped in to give schools some breathing room by passing a bill preventing the rules from going into effect until July.

Now, for the strategizing. I met earlier today with representatives from a coalition of education groups, including the National Association for State Directors of Special Education, the American Association of School Administrators, and National Conference of State Legislatures.

Bruce Hunter, a public policy chief with the AASA, said a lawsuit isn't off the table if interested groups are able to find the money, along with a brave enough plaintiff. But the education groups are also reaching out to non-education groups that are mad about other changes made to Medicaid rules. What these groups all share is a feeling that their objections were dismissed during the public comment period on the changes, said David Shreve, an education policy official with NCSL.

"Any input was ignored," Shreve told me. "The common denominator for us is that the process was perverted."

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The great thing about a blog is that it allows writers a chance to share information that can’t make it into the print edition of the newspaper. So, this is a perfect way to start On Special Education: with an interview on response to intervention with Department of Education official Louis Danielson.

Tight scheduling kept me from speaking to Danielson, the director of the research to practice division in the office of special education, before my articles (here and here) went to press, but I was able to spend a half hour talking with him about RTI, an educational framework that is gaining widespread attention.

Federal assistance on RTI: “One of our clear, key investments is the RTI center,” said Danielson, referring to the National Center on Response to Intervention, a $14.2 million, five-year project. The new center will take over some of the functions of the National Center on Student Progress Monitoring and the National Research Center on Learning Disabilities, both of which are wrapping up their grants this year. Some of the regional technical assistance centers are also helping states with RTI, though that’s not their sole focus, he said.

How to “scale it up”: Michael Gerber, an education professor at the University of California-Santa Barbara, takes a dim view of how successfully RTI can be expanded nationwide. Too many other education initiatives have fallen into disuse because people don’t take into account the differences in the thousands of schools and teachers who must implement a plan, he says.

Danielson said that he understands that concern, pointing out that it’s an issue with any educational innovation. However, the department has had a great deal of success with “positive behavior supports,” which is a way of using RTI to affect student behavior. He pointed to Virginia as a state where RTI is being introduced gradually, in a carefully controlled manner.
“They’re going to start with a small number of school districts and not to force it down people’s throats. The risk of doing it that way is that they’ll do it badly and say it doesn’t work,” Danielson said. “It is hard work to do, we’ve got to be deliberate about it and we’ve got to be smart about it.”

RTI and due process: Some parent groups are concerned that response to intervention might delay the identification of a child as learning disabled. Special education shouldn’t be seen as a negative, said Naomi P. Zigmond, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh. It should be seen as a way for students to get the targeted help that they need to succeed.

But students usually aren’t identified with learning disabilities quickly now, Danielson said. He referred to one district that was studied after it implemented RTI. It didn’t change its percentage of children who were identified as having learning disabilities—it held steady at about 5 or 6 percent, he said—but now 1st and 2nd graders were identified, which he sees as a good thing. “While there could be a fear that [RTI] could drag things out; in this district it didn’t happen,” Danielson said.

Expect to hear much more about RTI, the officials suggested. It’s too early to make definitive pronouncements, but the early information is exciting. "If well implemented, we can get really good results for kids,” Danielson said.

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