On Special Education

In honor of President Barack Obama having proclaimed October as National Disability Employment Awareness Month, the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services is featuring employment success stories on its Web site.

The site highlights projects and initiatives funded by the Office of Special Education Programs, the Rehabilitation Services Administration, and the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitative Research that improve employment outcomes for people with disabilities.

"President Obama and I recognize the critical role that education plays in empowering the next generation of Americans with disabilities," said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in a statement earlier this month. "Through education, we can help people with disabilities build a strong foundation of knowledge and marketable skills with expectations for employment and the ability to give back to others in their communities."

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The U.S. Senate Monday confirmed Alexa Posny, the former Kansas education commissioner, for the role of assistant secretary for special education and rehabilitative services.

President Obama nominated Posny to the key federal post back in July. The job will mark a return to Washington for Posny. She served as director of the Education Department's office of special education in 2006-07. She has been the Kansas commissioner of education since June 2007.

Updated:The confirmation was good news for special education advocates.

"She understands special education research, policy and practice and she will be a proactive informed leader to the entire Department of Education," said Deborah Ziegler, associate executive director for policy and advocacy services for the Council for Exceptional Children, a professional association for special educators. "Her collaborative nature will allow her to work across all of the education department to bring to the table the necessary infusion of special education in all school reform initiatives."

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The Council for Exceptional Children, a professional association for special educators, has announced a policy on the use of physical restraint and seclusion in school settings. The group hopes to establish as a professional standard that such procedures should only be used as a last resort when a child or others are in immediate danger, the policy says.

The group is also pushing for new laws that would require data on restraint and seclusion be reported to outside agencies, such as state or provincial departments of education.

"This policy indicates the high professional ethics and standards the special education community holds itself to," CEC President Kathleen Pucket said in a statement. "There are numerous evidence-based practices that do not involve physical restraints or seclusion that teachers and school personnel may use to manage challenging behaviors. Restraint and seclusion procedures, if used at all, must be implemented properly. One child harmed is one too many."

The policy said neither restraint nor seclusion should be used as a punishment to force compliance. Interventions for children with behavior problems should focus on prevention and positive behavioral supports. School staff should be required to have training on how to avoid and defuse crisis and conflicts. There must be an adult supervising any child in seclusion. If a school uses physical restraint or seclusion procedures, there should be a written positive behavior-support plan and pre-established emergency procedures, the policy says.

Readers can view CEC's full policy on physical restraint and seclusion here.

Posted by Lisa Fine at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

The U.S. Department of Education has offered some legal guidance to schools about their requirements to educate special education students in times of a swine flu outbreak.

Some schools closed their doors after cases of swine flu first appeared last spring. Not much was known about how schools would handle educating students with disabilities if there were ever long school closures or long absences by students because of the H1N1 virus. With a new school year under way, the U.S. Department of Education released legal guidelines Sept. 1.

Federal laws like the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act do not specifically address what schools should do if they are closed for extended periods of time for special circumstances like the swine flu, the guidance says, but schools must be sure not to discriminate against students with disabilities in providing services.

When educational opportunities are provided to the general student population, students with disabilities must have equal access. To “the greatest extent possible,” the students should receive the services in their Individualized Education Plans and Section 504 plans, the guidelines said.

If schools are closed and do not provide any educational services to the general student population, then they would not be required to provide services to special education students either. But once school resumes, the schools need to determine whether a student with a disability needs compensatory education to make up for any skills that may have been lost, the Education Department said.

Technology will be helpful in times of a swine flu outbreak, the guidelines said. The department suggests that school officials consider ways of providing educational materials in accessible formats or through the use of auxiliary aids and services in order for a student with a disability to participate in a distance-learning program.

If a school continues to teach the general school population during an H1N1 outbreak, but is not able to provide services to a student with a disability based on that student's existing IEP, the student’s IEP team determines which services can be provided to best meet the child’s needs.

The team may meet by teleconference or other means to determine if some, or all, of the identified services can be provided through alternate or additional methods such as through tutoring by phone, the Internet, or closed-circuit programming. Schools should use this same plan for students who have a Section 504 plan. Then when school resumes, the teams can assess what makeup services would be needed, the guidelines said.

IEP teams would not be required to meet in person if a school closes. IEP teams,
however, must continue working with parents and students with disabilities, including conducting informal assessments or formal assessments of the student, including parent surveys and standardized reports, and offer advice, as needed. If an evaluation of a student with a disability requires a face-to-face meeting or observation, the evaluation would need to be delayed until school reopens. Evaluations and reevaluations that do not require face-to-face assessments or observations may take place while schools are closed, if the parent consents, according to the guidelines.

For special education students who have lost skills because of prolonged absences from school, the IEP team should determine to what extent compensatory services are needed. These services can be delivered by providing extended school-year services, extending the school day, providing tutoring before and after school, or providing additional services during regular school hours, the guidelines said.

Here is a link to the full text of the guidelines. Please comment about whether you think schools are prepared to meet this special challenge. If you are a parent, are you concerned about this issue?

Posted by Lisa Fine at 1:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Education Secretary Arne Duncan spoke Tuesday before a group of state special education officials gathered in Washington, pledging his commitment to prevent "horrific tragedies" resulting from inappropriate use of seclusion and restraints on students, and asking officials to be a part of the development of common state standards to make sure the unique needs of students with disablities are considered.

Duncan spent much of his time talking about the broad policy agenda that the Obama administration is pursuing. He noted that more than half of students with disabilities spend most of their school day in general education classrooms.

"How how do we make sure not just special education teachers, but every single teacher, can be a teacher of children with special needs?" Duncan said.

Duncan also said that the department was relying on good ideas from parents, teachers, and state officials.

"Before I came to Washington, I definitely didn't think all the good ideas came out of Washington; now that I'm Washington I know all the good ideas don't come out Washington," he said, drawing a laugh from the crowd.

Duncan took a few questions from audience members after his comments. A Missouri state official said that her state is ready to start "scaling up" some of its successful practices, but doesn't have the money to do so. Duncan said he didn't have an easy answer, but that the Race to the Top program might be a source of funding for programs in that state.

Mary Watson, the current president of the National Association of State Directors of Special Education, said that her state has had its alternate assessment for students with disabilities rejected "two or three times" by peer reviewers from the Education Department. (This blog post talks about Texas, a state that has had its alternate assessment approved.)

The process is discouraging for the state and for students, who are not getting an opportunity to demonstrate what they know, Watson said. She praised the priorities that Duncan outlined in his speech, adding: "I just encourage you to keep that vision, to think differently, and to understand that not every child is exactly the same."

Duncan said that the federal government is looking for models that can help states in the process of creating alternate assessments. "It's a huge issue that I'm focused on," he said.

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Today I was pleased to moderate a web chat on postsecondary transition that featured two experts: Stacie Dojonovic, a transition coordinator at Fox Chapel High School in Pittsburgh, and Larry Kortering, the co-principal investigator for the National Secondary Transition Technical Assistance Center, which provides assistance to states in developing transition plans for their students.

Click here to read the transcript!

Posted by Christina Samuels at 6:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Alexa E. Posny, the Kansas commissioner of education, has been nominated to serve as the assistant secretary for the office of special education and rehabilitative services, known as OSERS.

If confirmed by the Senate, Posny would be making a return trip to the department: In April 2006, she was appointed to serve as the director of the office of special education programs, which is part of OSERS. She left the department in May 2007 to return to Kansas to lead that state's education department. She has also served as Kansas state director of special education, the director of special education for the Shawnee Mission district, and as a Title I technical advisor for other districts around the country.

I wrote a profile of Posny in 2007, and the people I interviewed then praised her for her ability to break down complicated subjects, as well as for her experience with special education, Title I, and state education department governance.

“She’s very down to earth and very concrete in the things she puts together for families,” said Connie Zienkewicz, the executive director of Families Together Inc., a federally funded center for parent training and information, based in Wichita.

Former Kansas Commissioner of Education Andy Tompkins, now a professor at the University of Kansas school of education, said in an e-mail message that Ms. Posny “knows the [special education] law and its regulations as well as anyone.”

Nancy Reder, the director of governmental affairs for the National Association of State Directors of Special Education, offered similar praise when I spoke to her today. "We're delighted, we think she's a great choice," Reder told me. Posny's Title I and special education experience are great foundations for the new role, Reder added.

File photo above: Alexa Posny, director of the office of special education programs at the Department of Education, Center, during a staff meeting in December of 2006.
Christopher Powers/Education Week

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The District of Columbia has become the first jurisdiction to have a portion of its federal special education funding withheld because it is not meeting the "State Performance Plan" process created in the 2004 reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

According to a June 1 letter from the U.S. Department of Education, 20 percent of its federal fiscal year 2009 funding will be withdrawn. That's equivalent to about $3,396,000, based on the budget tables found here that say the city was going to receive a little less than $17 million in federal special education funds this year.

Ruth Ryder, the Director of the Division of Monitoring and State Improvement Planning in Education Department's Office of Special Education Programs, corrects me on this point. In an email, she said, "It is not 20 percent of its Federal fiscal year 2009 funds that are being withheld but rather, as stated in the letter to D.C., "20 percent of D.C.'s FFY 2009 funds reserved for State-level activities under section 611(e) of the IDEA..." This amounts to about $480,000." D.C. is losing part of the funds it would use for administrative activities, not money that goes directly to providing services to students.

(The blog IDEA Moneywatch is following this issue, and notes that despite D.C.'s penalty, it's still slated to receive more than $16 million in stimulus funds.)

The act requires that states monitor certain educational outcomes in their districts for students with disabilities, and submit "annual performance reports" to the federal government. There are 20 different "indicator areas" (pdf) that states must calculate for students covered under Part B of the law, which applies to young people ages 3 through 21. An additional 14 indicators (pdf) must be submitted for infants and toddlers with disabilities, who are funded under part C of the law.

After the states and jurisdictions submit their information, they get a "grade" from the department: meets requirements, needs assistance, needs intervention, or needs substantial intervention. The information is always a little bit behind real time, so the ratings that states are receiving now are based on data from the 2007-08 school year. The rating letters for all the states can be found here.

States and jurisdictions that receive three "needs intervention" ratings in a row face certain penalties, up to the loss of 20 to 50 percent of their federal funding that is "reserved for State-level activities."

The full letter for D.C. is here, and it details some rather extensive problems, generally related to the 45,000-student district's inability to provide valid and reliable data for several indicator areas.

From the letter:

Given the nature of the noncompliance noted in this letter and that D.C. has had Special Conditions placed on its grant award under Part B of the IDEA since 2001, the Department has concluded that D.C. would be unable to correct its problems in one year. D.C. previously entered into a compliance agreement with the Department under the IDEA from 1998-2001, and it did not result in compliance. We therefore feel compelled to take a more serious enforcement action based on the magnitude of the noncompliance with the requirements of Part B of the IDEA and the length of that noncompliance.

The District of Columbia does have the option of appealing this decision. But, given the dysfunction within city's special education system, it might be difficult for it to convince the department that it can come into substantial compliance any time soon. It has made progress in some areas, but long-standing problems remain in the system's ability to evaluate students in a timely fashion and provide services after evaluation.

D.C. is not the only jurisdiction to get a "needs intervention" rating three years in a row. Colorado and Indiana did as well. However, both those states are being asked to submit corrective action plans within 60 days because the department believes their problems can be addressed in a year.

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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.

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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 | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

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?

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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 | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The U.S. Department of Education has put out a 22-page set of guidelines (pdf) on how to spend stimulus dollars for the Individuals With Disabilities Act, Part B (5- to 21-year-olds) and Section 619 (3- to 5-year-olds) States will receive $11.7 billion over the next two years for these programs.

There are also guidelines (pdf) for stimulus funding for IDEA Part C (infants and toddlers). That program will receive $500 million over two years.

The guidance is written in a convenient question-and-answer format, and I will be digging further into it a little later. I invite readers to do the same, particular in the IDEA part B section on "maintenance of effort," which are questions D-6 through D-12.

It appears to me that states may be able to use a portion of their special education stimulus money to reduce state funding of special education. That much was known. However, I didn't know that states would have the option to continue funding special education at that reduced level even when the two-year stimulus funding is gone, which is what this guidance seems to suggest. I'd be interested in hearing other thoughts on this.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 2:45 PM | Permalink

Get ready for more teacher training, more technology, and perhaps more resources for early intervention programs as school districts start to get their hands on the $12.2 billion allocated by the federal government for special education stimulus funds.

There are still a lot of unresolved questions, superintendents told me for a story I wrote this week. (Story here.) Though we in Washington have focused on the U.S. Department of Education, superintendents don't work directly with the federal government on issues like these. The state departments of education are the entities that monitor district compliance and program quality, and the districts aren't going to make a move without knowing that they're using the money in a way that won't prompt a big audit later.

But even with those uncertainties, the superintendents I talked to offered some broad outlines of how they'd like to spend the money. The federal government has indicated that it's better to spend stimulus dollars on "short-term investments that have the potential for long-term benefits, rather than for expenditures the LEAs may not be able to sustain once the recovery funds are expended."

So that means paying for things like professional development in response to intervention, improved data systems, or possibly even building renovations and expansions if districts receive a special waiver from the Education Department. What the money shouldn't be spent on, generally, is new teachers and brand-new programs, unless the district is sure it'll be able to pay for the program when the federal money is gone.

It's an exciting opportunity, superintendents said, but the stimulus dollars may come too late for some of them to halt layoffs in some cash-strapped areas. As Bruce Hunter with the American Association of School Administrators told me, "the problem is just bigger than anyone thought it was going to be."

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I have wondered if there's anything in the stimulus bill that offers assistance for students with gifts and talents. Unlike Title I and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, there is no federal mandate for gifted programs. Instead, the cost of gifted education is borne by the states.

But when I spoke to Jane Clarenbach with the National Association for Gifted Children last week, she said that the stimulus could mean that more beginning teachers will leave college prepared to teach gifted children, as well as students with disabilities, students who have limited English proficiency, and students with low literacy levels.

Her optimism comes from examining the intersection of the stimulus and the recently passed Higher Education Act. The act, passed in 2008, requires colleges of education to place a specific emphasis on training teachers for diverse student populations outlined above.

Fast forward to the stimulus, which allocates $100 million to be used for improving teacher and principal quality. Teacher preparation proograms will receive an infusion of cash which they'll have to use in part to bolster their teacher training, including following the rules of the HEA.

Most teacher candidates learn very little about gifted students, other than a lecture here or there, Clarenbach said. So as new teachers make their way through the education pipeline, the stimulus money could pay for more training to fill that knowledge gap.

Of course, the question becomes: how many colleges and universities are prepared to offer the kinds of classes beginning teachers say they want, and need, to be comfortable teaching diverse populations? Clarenbach says that you have to start somewhere -- and the NAGC is ready to help.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 3:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)

The House Committee On Rules has the full text of the stimulus package on its Web site, and the education spending is included in "Division A" (pdf) of the bill. Be warned: the previous link leads to a 496-page download.

Of the $12.2 billion to be directed to special education over this fiscal year and the next, $11.3 billion will be for direct aid to states, $400 million will be for preschool programs (Section 619 of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), and $500 million will be for Part C of the IDEA, which covers early intervention programs for infants and toddlers.

The nearly $1 billion going toward early intervention programs for very young children will be an important issue to follow. Surveys show that practitioners who work with young children with disabilities lack confidence in their ability to implement best practices with these children.

These studies have been done through the federally funded (and awkwardly named) Center To Inform Personnel Preparation Policy And Practice In Early Intervention and Preschool Education, which is based at the University of Connecticut.

If you scroll down on this page to "Study VII" (sorry, there's no direct link available) you can see the "competence and confidence" data reports from the center.

The studies show that most practitioners feel fairly "confident" that they understand best practices, but there's nearly always a gap in their feelings of "competence" in actually executing those practices themselves. Most practitioners surveyed (80 percent) said they got no training through their education programs to work with young children with disabilities; 50 percent reported being required to get extra training by their states.

I'd like to know how, or if, this money will lead to better training for people who provide early intervention services.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 3:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

House education aides say that the $12.2 billion for special education funding in the stimulus package will follow existing funding provisions, as opposed to the broader waivers that were a part of the Senate's version of the stimulus bill.

My earlier post on maintenance of effort and "supplement-not-supplant" issues explains why this is an important issue. The Senate version of the stimulus bill would have allowed states to apply for waivers that would let them temporarily use all of their stimulus money to replace state dollars for special education.

Disability advocacy groups are likely to be happy about the way the final bill turned out. They were worried that shifting dollars would leave students with disabilities in the lurch after the stimulus dollars went away. Governors and state officials are likely to be unhappy, because they were looking for the greatest amount of flexibility possible in spending this money.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 5:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The Department of Labor released the first official statistics on the employment status of people with disabilities today. The first set of data covers October 2008 through January 2009; statistics will be updated monthly.

Perhaps not surprisingly, people with disabilities have higher rates of unemployment compared to their non-disabled peers--13.2 percent compared to 8.3 percent.

In November, the Department of Labor also released a survey that measured employer attitudes towards workers with disabilities. That report (pdf) is loaded with interesting information; for example, 33 percent of large companies reported hiring a person with disabilities in the past year, compared to 8 percent of medium sized companies.

Also, public employers are more likely to recruit people with disabilities than their private-sector counterparts. And no more than about 14 percent of companies of any size were aware of the Employer Assistance and Recruiting Network, a service of the Labor Department that assists employers in locating and recruiting qualified workers with disabilities.

Thanks to Disability Scoop for the tip.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 4:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For the special education world, seen perpetually underfunded, the prospect of an infusion of $13 billion over two years in federal stimulus funds might seem like a pretty great deal.

But the extra funding has become entangled in spending rules that are a part of the complex Individuals With Disabilities Education Act. And now, some of the same advocates who might be supportive of extra funding are against proposed waiver provisions that they think might ultimately result in fewer programs and services for students with disabilities after the stimulus than before.

First, a caution: the stimulus packages are constantly changing objects right now. So many proposals are coming and going that certain issues are becoming obsolete, only to be replaced by new objects of concern.

But it's worth paying attention to this issue, if only to remember that federal dollars never come without any strings.

To understand, it helps to go back to the original law. Special education is paid for by a combination of school district, state, and federal dollars. In fiscal 2008, about $11 billion federal dollars were distributed to the states to be used for special education-related services.

The IDEA includes provisions to ensure that districts continue “maintenance of effort,” so that funding levels do not drop from year to year. Part of the maintenance of effort provisions also state that state and local agencies must use federal dollars to “supplement, not supplant” their own efforts.

The 2004 reauthorization of the IDEA offered some exceptions to "supplement, not supplant" provisions. If the federal government allocates more money to a district from one year to the next, the district is allowed to take the difference between the two allocations, halve it, and use that figure to reduce their own funding requirements. See here.

So, if a district received $1 million in federal funds for a fiscal year, and $1.5 million the next fiscal year, the district is allowed to reduce its local funding requirements by $250,000.

Candace Cortiella, the director of The Advocacy Institute and friend of the blog, said the provision was created with the assumption that federal funding for special education would go up over the years. Reducing the state and local funding requirement when federal funds go up recognizes that state and local agencies bear the primary funding burden for special education services and could use relief, Candace told me.

The House of Representatives' version of the stimulus bill makes no changes to any of the funding provisions already in the IDEA. However, the package under debate in the Senate does. In that bill, districts would be allowed to use all of their extra stimulus money to replace, or supplant, local and state funding.

Nancy Reder, the deputy executive director for government affairs for the National Association of State Directors of Special Education, told me that her organization’s members have asked for this flexibility. The organization sees temporary waivers as the best way to absorb and spend this new money on what's really needed. Also, without the waivers, they're concerned that the money wouldn't be spent, and that would hurt future efforts to try and get more special education money on a permanent basis.

Opponents of the waiver proposed in the Senate say that the bill is supposed to improve special education, not just maintain what we already have. If the states and districts are no longer required to maintain their funding efforts, then there’ll be no extra money for students with disabilities, just the same amount of money there was before.

Paul Marchand, the director of the Disability Policy Collaboration for The Arc, is an opponent of this provision. The IDEA already gives the U.S. secretary of education a lot of discretion, and the Senate doesn't have to go any further, he said.

Again, I caution that because the stimulus bills are changing, some of these issues may soon be resolved. But until they are, it may be premature to celebrate all the "extra" special ed dollars that are coming to the states.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 3:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

This great link was passed to me by Linda Perlstein, the public editor for the Education Writers Association. It's a breakdown of how much every school district in the country would receive in special education dollars under the stimulus bill recently passed by the House of Representatives.

The "American Recovery and Reinvestment Bill" includes $13 billion for special education funding under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act--a hefty infusion, considering the government's contribution this year was around $11 billion.

The link also provides information on Title I and construction funds that would flow to schools under the proposal. Based on this, I see that the school district I used to cover, Prince William County Schools in lovely Northern Virginia, would be looking at another $28 million total for fiscal 2009 and 2010, about $16.3 million of which would be IDEA funds. I'm sure they won't turn it down.

Of course, there's far more that needs to be done before this bill becomes a reality, including reconciling the House bill with the Senate's version of the stimulus package. My colleague Alyson Klein has a story here, and David Hoff has an article on state chiefs' expectations here.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 7:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

The new regulations were released Monday and will go into effect Dec. 31. Among the changes:

*Parents have the right to unilaterally stop their child from receiving special education services after those services have begun, if they make a request in writing.

*Non-lawyer advocates can represent either side in a due process hearing UNLESS there's a state law to the contrary. The Education Department specifically referenced a 2000 Delaware Supreme Court case, In re Arons, that was brought by a group of lawyers against Marilyn Arons, a parent advocate. The Delaware high court decided that, though the IDEA allows parents to have expert counsel with them during a hearing, it did not override the state law that prevents non-lawyers from providing the equivalent of legal assistance.

I profiled Arons in a 2006 article about parent advocacy. She also has her own blog, which I encourage readers to check out; here's her post about this particular regulation.

*School districts now have a year from the time they discover a problem to fix any IDEA noncompliance issues. There was no specific timeline in the regulations before.

My article about these changes will be in Education Week Dec. 10. I'll update this post with the link when the story is available online.

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My colleagues at Edweek.org have posted a first look at an article I wrote this week on special education compliance and the states. The print version of the story will be in the Nov. 19 issue of Education Week.

The passage of the Individuals with Disabilities Act in 2004 came with some new compliance mandates for states from the U.S. Department of Education. States must collect information from their districts on a variety of topics related to students with disabilities, including graduation and dropout rates, parent involvement, transition planning, settlements in due process cases, and others.

These topics are called "indicators," and states collect the information annually. States also create improvement plans for themselves, called state performance plans, based on these indicators.

From the very first time I wrote about this issue in 2005, state special education officials were concerned that takes a tremendous amount of time and effort to collect this much data and report it to the government. That feeling hadn't changed in 2007, when I revisited the issue. But based on the response they have received from government officials, that is unlikely to change. From my most recent article:

Although some state officials have complained that collecting the required data diverts time and money away from educating students with disabilities, federal officials have said plainly that they disagree.

Collecting the information does not “in any way negatively impact outcomes for students with disabilities,” the department said in a “comments and analysis” document released after a different round of public comments that was held last year.

In addition, the department said it does not plan to trim down any requirements.

“We believe, in order for the ... process to demonstrate its full impact, it is important to maintain consistency and will, with some minor adjustments, retain the original indicators,” wrote federal education officials.

Blogger Jim Gerl has also written about this issue, from the perspective of a due process hearing officer and a special education consultant. An excerpt from his take on the issue: "I have always been amazed at the SPP indicators. I think that the current NCLB-inspired theory that everything can be reduced to data and measured or assessed has hit its odd high point here."

If you're interested in offering your comments to the U.S. Department of Education on this issue, you have until Nov. 21 to do so. Written comments should be addressed to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Attention: Education Desk Officer, Office of Management and Budget, 725 17th Street, NW., Room 10222, Washington, DC 20503.

The Education Department says commenters are also encouraged to submit responses electronically by e-mail to oira_submission@omb.eop.gov or via fax to (202) 395-6974. If you comment electronically, there's no need to send in a paper copy of your comments.

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From Patricia E. Bauer's Disability News blog, this news:

On Wednesday, October 8, 2008, the President signed into law:

… S. 1810, the “Prenatally and Postnatally Diagnosed Conditions Awareness Act,” which authorizes the Department of Health and Human Services to establish a grant program to collect and disseminate information regarding Down syndrome or other prenatally or postnatally diagnosed diseases and to coordinate the provision of support services for those who receive a diagnosis of one of those diseases.

Bauer, a journalist who has a daughter with Down syndrome, has written that the bill forged an unlikely alliance between abortion rights advocates and opponents of abortion, who both agreed that parents who have been told that their child will have a disability need access to scientifically sound information. Families will be referred to support organizations and information clearinghouses.

The Down syndrome advocacy community has been particularly active in this issue because tests for Down syndrome, a chromosomal abnormality, were among the first prenatal tests to be developed. Now, about 1,000 prenatal tests exist or are in development, Bauer writes.

Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Republican Congresswoman from Washington state who has a toddler son with Down syndrome, was a supporter of the bill. She is also the founder of the bipartisan Congressional Down Syndrome Caucus, and she talks a little bit about the work of that group in this video, joined by her highly adorable son Cole. He almost steals the show:

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I always know when I'm at a conference of teachers and former teachers. No matter what, there always seems to be a time when a speaker commands the audience to get up for a little game or musical interlude. Old classroom habits die hard.

So at today's Office of Special Education Programs Leadership Conference in Baltimore, even though the special education administrators in attendance had likely long since left the classroom, I wasn't surprised that a presentation on a reading program in North Carolina ended with the audience being asked to sing...about reading.

But that was just one light moment in a conference that delved into some crunchy issues, including guidance to states on what the U.S. Department of Education calls "coordinated early intervening services." The 2004 amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities Act allow--and sometimes require--districts to use up to 15 percent of their federal special education dollars to provide early intervention services for students who aren't identified as needing special education.

The thinking is that the early services would reduce referrals to special education by providing good instruction for students early on. It's the same philosophical underpinning of the push toward response to intervention.

Where the requirement to spend the money comes in is if a state has "significant disproportionality" in some special education categories. In plain English, the money is supposed to be used to make sure certain ethnic subgroups aren't referred to special education more than their representation in the student body would seem to merit.

For instance, if African-Americans are 14 percent of a district's student body, but 20 percent of its special education population, disproportionality could be a problem. The same problem could exist if minorities are overrepresented in a particular special education category.

The important part to remember is that all of this work is something that is to be done at the general education level. To repeat, these early intervening services are to be provided to students who are not in special education, but who need "additional academic and behavior supports."

Much like RTI, coordinated early intervening services requires a mental shift on the part of general educators. Children with unspecified problems can't be handed off to a special educator to "fix."

Logistically, it's also a challenge for districts to collect the data that proves they have a problem with disproportionality, and this data must be collected yearly. Also, the money has to be used for something that will actually address the disproportionality. The money can't be used, for example, to build a new school.

The money must also supplement, and not supplant, other funding that a district may receive.

The Education Department has recently released some guidance (pdf) on the topic. My question to readers: States complain frequently that they aren't getting enough money for special education, a complaint that has been heard at pretty high levels. Is setting aside 15 percent of federal funds specifically for NON-special education students a sound use of limited dollars? The Education Department says yes; what do you think?

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The U.S. Department of Education's office of special education programs has divided $2.4 million among 20 universities around the country to help those universities train highly qualified teachers of students with "high incidence" disabilities. Such disabilities include emotional disturbance, mental retardation and learning disabilities like dyslexia.

These grants are part of the Special Education Preservice Training Improvement Grants Program, and will cover the first year of what are expected to be five-year projects at the colleges.

I first started covering special education in November 2004, right after the reauthorization of IDEA. A few months later, I wrote an article about the deep concern many special educators felt about the highly qualified provisions of the law. Many teachers feared that it would be difficult to find instructors highly qualified both in special education and in a particular subject area.

It sounds like Education Secretary Margaret Spellings heard the same complaints, based on this statement released by the department: "We consistently hear from state, local and higher education officials that personnel preparation programs for special education teachers should be restructured or redesigned for graduates of these programs to meet the highly qualified teacher requirements in IDEA."

I'll be writing a little bit more about what these universities plan to do with their money for the Aug. 13 issue of Education Week.

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While I was out, the U.S. Department of Education's office for civil rights released a letter praising the changes in American society caused by the passage of the ADA:

America is undeniably stronger because of the ADA and the contributions individuals with disabilities have made to every aspect of our society. The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has played an important role in implementing and enforcing the ADA, by working with state and local education agencies as well as postsecondary institutions to make groundbreaking strides in providing access to opportunities for students with disabilities on a nondiscriminatory basis. ...

We now know that many changes originally intended to benefit students with disabilities often improve the college experience for everyone. A college’s math course redesigned to meet the needs of students with learning disabilities turned out to be helpful to many other students in the math course. Real time captioning intended for students who are deaf or hard of hearing provides every student two ways to receive the instructional material. “Universal design” in web materials enhances the flexibility and cross platform usability of instructional sites for all students across different operating systems, browsers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and multimedia.

The letter also refers to a new "Wounded Warriors Initiative" started by the Education Department. So You Want to Go Back to School is an informational letter to Iraq and Afghanistan veterans from the office for civil rights, spelling out their rights under ADA and Section 504.

The letter points out that wounded soldiers, unlike others with disabilities, may have no first-hand knowledge of disability laws. And colleges and universities may also have little experience in working with students who may have post-traumatic stress disorder, multiple amputations, burns, traumatic brain injury, and other injuries common among veterans of our most recent conflicts.

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The New Teacher Hotline, sponsored by the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence, interviewed me in June on a variety of special education topics, including response to intervention and what I really thought about the teacher in Florida who sent a kindergarten student with autism out of her classroom. The podcast is up now. Thanks Mike!

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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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