On Special Education

Rev. Jeremiah Wright, former pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church Church of Christ in Chicago, doesn't just have a lot to say about politics--he also has some thoughts on special education as well, which he shared during his April 27 speech before the NAACP in Detroit:

Turn to your neighbor and say different does not mean deficient. It simply means different. In fact, Dr. Janice Hale was the first writer whom I read who used that phrase. Different does not mean deficient. Different is not synonymous with deficient....Dr. Hale showed us that in comparing African-American children and European-American children in the field of education, we were comparing apples and rocks.

And in so doing, we kept coming up with meaningless labels like EMH, educable mentally handicapped, TMH, trainable mentally handicapped, ADD, attention deficit disorder.

And we were coming up with more meaningless solutions like reading, writing and Ritalin. Dr. Hale's research led her to stop comparing African-American children with European-American children and she started comparing the pedagogical methodologies of African-American children to African children and European-American children to European children. And bingo, she discovered that the two different worlds have two different ways of learning....

Some of you are old enough, I see your hair color, to remember when the NAACP won that tremendous desegregation case back in 1954 and when the schools were desegregated. They were never integrated. When they were desegregated in Philadelphia, several of the white teachers in my school freaked out. Why? Because black kids wouldn't stay in their place. Over there behind the desk, black kids climbed up all on them.

Because they learn from a subject, not from an object. Tell me a story. They have a different way of learning. Those same children who have difficulty reading from an object and who are labeled EMH, TMH, and ADD. Those children can say every word from every song on every hip-hop radio station half of whose words the average adult here tonight cannot understand. Why? Because they come from a right-brained creative oral culture like the griots in Africa who can go for two or three days as oral repositories of a people's history....

"Black cultural learning styles," anyone?

Thanks to Joanne Jacobs for the tip.

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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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I scoured the Internet to find other blog posts on the Council for Exceptional Children convention, which wrapped up last week.

Christine Southard's Blogspot delved into assistive technology and co-teaching.

Daniel McNulty, blogging on behalf of an assistive technology project in Indiana, talked about his own presentation on using iPods in the classroom.

Dorophoria found some sessions she liked, but complained that the titles of some presentations didn't match the actual content. Pat at Successful Teaching offers to share some of her notes on multicultural education of students with different learning needs, and reveals her sweet crush on "The Fonz"—actor Henry Winkler, who has dyslexia, was the keynote speaker this year.

Kate at Teaching Learners with Multiple Special Needs found a few sessions that interested her, but struggled to find relevance in the conference to the children she teaches, who have severe and profound disabilities.

I understand those concerns. This is the third CEC convention I've attended, and I always find it a rich source of story ideas. However, I'm not attending with a teacher's mindset. I understand how easy it would be to be overwhelmed if I went there looking for specific guidance on one small area of the special education world. Six thousand attendees, hundreds of sessions ... it's a lot.

I'm also surprised that the CEC itself didn't ask a squadron of attendees to produce a blog. The organization already has a blog; it would have been a great resource for the many teachers who can't afford to spend the time or the money to attend the event in person. Maybe next year?

If there are other blogs that I missed, or if you just want to share your own impressions of the conference, please add a note or link in the comments section.

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After I wrote two weeks ago about Missouri lawmakers' considering vouchers for students with autism, Piet van Lier directed me to an analysis he did for a Cleveland-based public policy group on Ohio's autism voucher program. It grants parents up to $20,000 a year in state aid in order to pay for educational services. The program served 734 children in the 2006-07 school year, at a cost to the state of about $10.8 million, and the policy analysis suggests that money would be better used to expand programs that can serve more children with autism.

My article will be in next week's print edition, but it's already up on the web. The comments on my Missouri blog post, plus the interviews I did for the Ohio story, make it clear to me that the parents who use such programs really love them. I asked parents if they were concerned that school districts might avoid bolstering their autism programs if they believed they could just shift parents onto the voucher program. Lori Peacock, a mother I quoted in the article, said she has heard of districts very pointedly making parents aware that they can take voucher money and go elsewhere.

Peacock, who has a 12-year-old son with autism, said she doesn't feel like she can wait for districts to get their acts together. "They've had nine years to get it right for him, and they still haven't gotten it right," she said. "We need to have options."

OK, teachers and administators--what do you think?

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It's the time of year when high school seniors' thoughts turn to graduation, so two reports from Project Forum and the Center for Education Policy are perfectly timed.

The CEC policy brief linked to on this page takes a look at how high school exit exams affect students with disabilities. The conclusion is that they're not so great. States that require students to pass an exam in order to receive a diploma tend to have low graduation rates overall, particularly among students with disabilities.

Project Forum, a federally funded program of the National Association of State Directors of Special Education, takes a broader view by looking at graduation rates overall, not just exit exams. The report offers 14 recommendations, including allowing "multiple measures" for students to meet graduation requirements and allowing a range of course options that satisfy minimum graduation requirements.

(Project Forum used material from other research on this issue, including some reports from the National Center on Educational Outcomes, which I wrote about last month.)

One thing I've heard from a lot of disability advocates is their concern that without federal pressure, teachers won't hold students with disabilities to a high standard. So, the advocacy of "multiple measures" makes me wonder if they also might be seen as a backing away from high standards, or if they're just part of the reasonable accommodations schools should make for students with a variety of needs.

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Liz at the blog I Speak of Dreams had a fascinating analysis of "black cultural learning styles," an idea which she believes should be laid to rest. This idea suggests that black children are shortchanged in "euro-centric" schools because their learning styles are incompatible with most classrooms.

This link, though critical of the theory, is helpful because it gives some examples of what a black cultural learning style supposedly is: cooperative rather than competitive, impulsive, and passive, among other characteristics.

What really caught my attention was a comment she linked to within her essay, where she quoted a person who said there was a push in a school district to note "learning styles" on a student's individualized education program. The black kids, however, were getting the "kinesthetic learner" label, this commenter noted, while the white children tend to be called "auditory/visual learners."

When you say X is a "kinesthetic learner," you are basically saying, "forget all that higher-level thinking; algebra, critical reasoning, abstraction, language and mathematics are not for you, you can only learn with your hands. Off to McJobs!" Of course the people bandying about these stereotypes don't realize the import of what they're saying -- black kids better stick to menial labor -- but it's the soft underbelly of the crocodile.

There's tons of great links within the original essay. Have others noted what this commenter is suggesting, particularly within the area of special education and IEPs?

Tip of the hat to JohnL at Teach Effectively, for pointing out the blog post.

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Lawmakers in Missouri are considering following the lead of four other states that offer vouchers to parents of students with disabilities. I wrote about this issue about a year ago. Now, as then, I wonder: Even when such bills pass, are there enough schools available to accept these children?

The Missouri bill would be specifically for children with autism, and the lawmakers for and against vouchers in Missouri make familiar arguments. Those in favor say that such programs are a necessity for parents who don't have good options available to them in public schools. Opponents think it's a ploy to eventually spread vouchers to all students.

The bill under consideration is known as Bryce's Law, named for the grandson of the legislator who is behind the measure.

An alternative plan proposed by opponents of the measure would create an autism advisory council, an ombudsman to assist parents and districts, and early childhood education centers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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