Web Publisher's Note: "Rethinking Special Education for a New Century" is a volume of papers examining the past, present and future of special education. It is intended to help lay the groundwork for the 2002 IDEA reauthorization debate.
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By The Editors
A quarter century ago, President Ford signed historic legislation seeking to ensure educational equity for children with disabilities and special needs. This legislation, now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), was a major milestone in the quest to end the chronic exclusion and mis-education of students with exceptional needs. It helped open the door to fairness and access for millions of such youngsters and paved the way to greater educational success for many of them during the past 25 years.
But the law of unintended consequences was also at work during this period, as were Washington's well-known tendencies to over-regulate, over-manage, and make more complex. Even as important reforms began to sweep through regular K-12 education, the IDEA program was becoming set in its ways. Not every change it brought about turned out to be positive, and, although it has surely helped address many education challenges, it has created some, too.
For too long, most politicians, policymakers, and others involved with the IDEA and the special education system that law has helped to construct considered it taboo to discuss these problems and challenges. It seemed at times as if anything less than unadulterated praise for the IDEA was indicative of hostility towards its goals or -- worse -- towards children with special needs. Thus, the IDEA has come to be viewed as the "third rail" issue of education policy: It's fine to support more spending, maybe even suggest some incremental changes along the program's margin (generally by way of expanding it and closing loopholes), but it has not been okay to probe its basic assumptions and practices, much less criticize them. Well-intentioned people who have attempted to highlight deficiencies, inequities, and problems with special education have been criticized as interlopers with bad motives or political agendas and told to leave such matters to the "stakeholder community." Hence, the federal special education program has been subjected to astonishingly little objective policy analysis -- certainly nothing resembling its fair share of scrutiny considering that it now touches about 12 percent of American children and spends $7.4 billion annually at the federal level. Indeed, once state and local funds are added to the federal dollars, experts estimate that $35-$60 billion is spent annually on special education in this country. By some estimates, 40 percent of all new spending on K-12 education over the past 30 years has flowed into special education.
Because it's been so difficult, risky, and unrewarding to probe and ponder the special education program, many aspects have been insulated from the scrutiny that has led to important reforms in other areas of education over the past decade. It's time, we believe, to cut through that insulation and subject this important program to examination -- not, let us be clear, because we have any ax to grind or points to score but because millions of needy children depend on this program for their education. The least we can do is attempt to determine whether it's doing a good job for them. In this matter, every American is a stakeholder. We all share the responsibility to help ensure that special-needs students receive the high-quality education to which they are entitled.
This volume is a beginning, not an end. It does not hold the solution to every problem that confronts the special education system and neither do the authors or editors. We do believe, however, that the ideas, research, and reporting set forth in these pages provide an excellent starting point for policymakers seeking to rethink special education.
What does rethinking mean? It starts by posing some crucial questions. For example, is the current regulatory/civil rights model the best way to ensure quality education for youngsters with disabilities? Are students being needlessly referred to special education because of other deficiencies in our educational system -- for example, because they receive poor reading instruction-rather than because they have extraordinary needs? Is race a factor in special education assignment? Does the program's focus on compliance come at the expense of achievement?
Many more questions follow, and further analysis should follow as well. This set of papers, findings, ideas, and recommendations ought not to end the analytic process. It should merely help to launch it -- to stimulate fresh thinking in the policy community, spark further dialogue about how to ensure that youngsters with disabilities succeed in school, and inform the debate when the next IDEA reauthorization cycle begins.
Our goal in assembling this volume is to view special education in general and the IDEA in particular with some distance and objectivity. Several of the following chapters examine general aspects of the program; others are up-close case studies. Practically all of the authors are astute observers and practiced analysts for whom this was a new topic. Special education is relatively new to us, too. This means we may have overlooked some key points and misunderstood others. We invite readers to point out our omissions and misjudgments, all in the interest of continuing a needed conversation about this important program.
Fourteen of this volume's chapters were first presented and discussed at a two-day conference in November 2000, co-sponsored by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and the Progressive Policy Institute. Following that discussion, the authors undertook revisions, and the editors did what editors do -- hassled the authors, tweaked the words, poked at the ideas, and mulled our own conclusions. The editors' thinking on this subject is contained in the final chapter, which sets forth our conclusions in summary fashion and offers several principles to guide efforts to reform special education.
Our goal is to stimulate further analysis, debate, and discussion prior to the next IDEA reauthorization cycle, which should begin in 2002. We have not looked into every aspect of the program. Important issues await the attention of others; we urge that attention be paid. And we intend to be back with more detailed recommendations after more discussion, analysis, and (hopefully) consensus-building. In the meantime, we earnestly hope that this volume will contribute to a serious debate that goes well beyond how much money is being appropriated and instead asks how well the program is working and what might work better.
That discussion needs to go beyond the false choice that has so often been posed about the education of disabled children. It often seems as if policymakers have only two options: to maintain today's status quo, or return to the dreadful treatment accorded many disabled children before 1975. On National Public Radio recently, a university professor who studies the IDEA gave voice to this view, saying, "when people start complaining [about the IDEA], I say, 'Stop, do you want to go back to the 1960's?'" If we accomplish nothing else with this volume, perhaps we will at least open the eyes of policymakers to the fact that there are many other options worthy of consideration.
The authors and editors are anything but a homogeneous group with regard to political and educational philosophy. We do share, however, a commitment to asking difficult questions, tackling thorny issues, probing for important facts, and voicing truths even when they're uncomfortable. Only through this process can we improve the quality of education that we provide to young Americans.
The editors thank the authors for their intelligence, perspicacity, hard work, and willingness to endure our ministrations. We're grateful as well to those who participated in the November conference, especially those who chaired panels and commented on the draft papers. (A list of the conference's presenters, panel discussants and moderators, and attendees are included at the end of the volume.) We're deeply obliged to our colleagues on the staffs of the Progressive Policy Institute and the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. And we offer special thanks to Madeleine Will, for many years the senior federal official responsible for special education and a universally respected figure in this field, for her guidance, support, advice, and friendship throughout this endeavor. In addition, we acknowledge and appreciate a generous grant to the Progressive Policy Institute from the Annie E. Casey Foundation that provided financial support for the commissioning of several conference papers, as well as conference- and volume-related expenses. The views expressed in these papers are those of the authors alone, however, and are not necessarily shared by advisors, conferees, funders, or sponsoring institutions.
Through research, publications and articles, and work with policymakers, the 21st Century Schools Project at the Progressive Policy Institute supports initiatives to increase accountability, raise standards, foster equity, and increase choice and innovation in public education. The Project's goals are a natural extension of the mission of the Progressive Policy Institute, which is to define and promote a new progressive politics for the 21st century. The Institute is a project of the Third Way Foundation. For further information, please call 202-547-0001 or visit the Institute's website: www.ppionline.org.
The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation supports research, publications, and action projects in elementary/secondary education reform at the national level and in the Dayton area. Further information can be obtained at the Foundation's website (www.edexcellence.net) or by writing to 1627 K Street, NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20006. (The Foundation can also be e-mailed through its website.) This report is available in full on the Foundation's website, and hard copies can be obtained by calling 1-888-TBF-7474 (single copies are free). The Foundation is neither connected with nor sponsored by Fordham University.
Washington,D.C.
May 2001
By Madeleine Will*
Chester Finn and Charles Hokanson of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and Andrew Rotherham of the Progressive Policy Institute have achieved something quite important, and I commend them for it. They have ignited a process of discussion and debate about special education that has the potential for positive and long-lasting results.
Under the auspices of their respective institutions, these three gentlemen have issued a "Call To Examine." They commissioned a set of papers from analysts and journalists, proceeded to organize and hold a conference where these papers were discussed, and now have published fourteen of them in this volume. Moreover, they have undertaken this examination of special education in a collaborative and open manner -- seeking the advice and partnership of parents of children with disabilities, educators, and others with expertise in our field.
As the editors have stated in their foreword, this volume is meant to serve as an initial basis for discussion and should be regarded as a request for new and fresh ideas. They encourage students with disabilities and their families and special education professionals to respond to the ideas contained herein. They urge all who have an interest in the way in which special education services are delivered in this country to offer up their own best thinking about strategies for improving the education of students with disabilities.
The collaborative nature of this undertaking notwithstanding, it is important to note that with the publication of this series of essays comes an element of controversy. Make no mistake: Rethinking Special Education for a New Century is a thorough critique that is always stimulating, sometimes brilliant, sometimes harsh, and sometimes misguided. After all, these essays were written, as stated in the editors' foreword, mostly by individuals who "are astute observers and practiced analysts for whom this was a new topic." I hasten to add that one could not have expected these authors to have developed the perspective and insight that comes from living with a disability or living with a person who has a disability. Nor could one have expected them to have the perspective and insight that comes from teaching and working within the special education system.
What one will find in the following pages, however, is the sound of the beginning (the first salvo, if you will) of the 2002 IDEA reauthorization. My sincerest hope is that this next reauthorization will occur in the context of an informed, wide-ranging, and civilized debate. My sincerest hope is also that my colleagues and friends in the universe of special education and disability policy will welcome the participation of those outside our universe who seek to understand our vision for students with disabilities and offer to join with us in re-shaping it for the 21st century.
* Ms. Will is Vice President of Strategic Planning and Advocacy at Community Options, a Princeton-based nonprofit agency providing employment services and appropriate housing for people with disabilities. She formerly served as Assistant Secretary for the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services in the U.S. Department of Education.
By Tyce Palmaffy
Only in the past few years has Washington's share of special education funding risen higher than about 12 percent, despite Congress' 1975 promise to pay 40 percent of the incremental costs of educating students with disabilities pursuant to federal mandates. Meanwhile, those mandates -- elaborated by Congress, the Education Department, and the federal courts -- have steadily raised the financial obligations of states and school districts, and the number of students receiving special education services has soared. Although the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and its predecessor, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EAHCA), have succeeded in extending public education to millions of youngsters who previously had received an inappropriate education -- or none at all -- complaints about special education are widely voiced by local and state education officials, advocates for the disabled, parents, and teachers. Moreover, policymakers find that federal special education mandates complicate the handling of just about every other education reform.
This chapter traces the history of federal special education policy. During the 1950s and 1960s, civil rights advocates and parents of disabled children formed a powerful force for federal legislation, also scoring victories in the courts. In 1973, Congress passed Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, affirming the principle that disabled children should be educated in regular classrooms. Two years later came EAHCA, which expanded the federal special education financial commitment into a sizable program of grants to the states.
Palmaffy introduces key terms and issues, defines what handicapping conditions the IDEA covers, and describes the evolution of the federal courts' answers to two questions: What constitutes an "appropriate" education, and to what lengths must schools go to place disabled students in regular classrooms? The author emphasizes that:
The courts have clung to a case-by-case approach in determining what an "appropriate" education is;The courts have also obliged schools to provide a range of supplementary aids and services in order to mainstream students effectively;For the most part, court decisions regarding the services provided to disabled youngsters disregard cost or the impact on nondisabled peers;The IDEA's definitions of such categories as specific learning disabilities and behavioral disorders are hazy enough to allow for some striking differences from place to place in how the law is applied; andThe 1997 IDEA reauthorization sought to fold disabled students into the broader education standards-and-accountability movement but had limited success in accomplishing this.
Download Chapter 1 in Adobe PDF format....
By Wade F. Horn & Douglas Tynan
Although the IDEA has succeeded in opening up educational opportunities for children with disabilities, Drs. Horn and Tynan emphasize that it has also had some unintended negative consequences. These include the creation of incentives to define an ever-increasing percentage of school-aged children as disabled, an enormous redirection of financial resources from regular education to special education, and, perhaps most importantly, the application of an open-ended "accommodation" philosophy to populations better served with prevention or intervention strategies. Although the federal program was initially intended to address the educational needs of the severely disabled, today approximately 90 percent of special education students have lesser disabilities, such as a specific learning disability, speech and language delays, mild mental retardation, or an emotional disorder.
Drs. Horn and Tynan conclude that, for many special education students, the goal should be independence rather than lifetime accommodations. They note that little attention is paid by federal accountability systems to whether students in special education are advancing in core subjects or acquiring the skills necessary for making special services and accommodations no longer necessary. Instead, the focus remains on process rather than results.
Reforming special education so that it is better targeted, more cost-efficient, and more effective in improving educational outcomes for students with disabilities requires three things:
First, recognition that special education consists of three separate groups of students (children with significant sensory, cognitive, and physical disabilities; children with neurological dysfunction; and children with behavioral problems), each with different educational needs;Second, the funding structure for special education must be changed to reward schools for improving the educational outcomes of disabled youngsters, not just identifying and serving them; andThird, the IDEA should be re-committed to empowering students to overcome their disabilities by equipping them with coping and compensatory mechanisms, whenever possible, rather than teaching youngsters to expect a lifetime of special accommodations and services.
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By Patrick J. Wolf & Bryan C. Hassel
Experts estimate that $35-60 billion is spent each year to provide a "special" education to disabled children in the United States. The wide range of cost estimates itself hints at an insufficient level of accountability in these programs, while raising the important question of what society is receiving as a return on its substantial investment in special education services and what accountability systems operate to track and report their progress. In other words, how do we know whether special education is working in the United States? How should we define "working" in this context?
The authors focus primarily on the "compliance model" of accountability that currently governs most special education programs. They conclude that it fails even to ensure widespread compliance with applicable laws and regulations, while generating undesirable outcomes and perverse incentives. They then outline other possible models for improving effectiveness and accountability and assess the strengths and weaknesses of these alternatives.
The mandates contained within the 1997 IDEA amendments, Drs. Wolf and Hassel note, are too vague and allow too many exceptions to represent a true "sea change" from procedural compliance. Indeed, they conclude that the accountability systems being implemented in the wake of IDEA '97 appear flawed in theory, design, and practice. Could there be a better way? The authors explore that question in Chapter 14.
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By Mark Kelman
In this chapter, Professor Kelman sets forth three controversial propositions that should drive today's and tomorrow's debates over special education.
First, he contends, policymakers must deal with issues of testing accommodation, especially the burgeoning use of extra time by students with learning disabilities. Whatever one's view of testing accommodation, Professor Kelman writes, determinations of what skills are appropriate to test and what can and cannot be justly tested and rewarded are policy issues. Casting them as issues of discrimination -- do those with disabilities have the opportunity to succeed on tests? -- assumes naively that norms against discrimination mandate equality of group outcome, rather than that inequalities be justified by real distinctions in relevant performance.
Second, policymakers must address the linked issues of discipline and segregation, scrutinizing all claims that non-disabled students face disruption. They must decide how to make vexing trade-offs: Higher levels of integration may well improve the educational experience of disabled children but at some cost to nondisabled children.
Third, policymakers must tackle bona fide issues of scarcity and resource allocation. The IDEA currently gives legal priority to claims by students with learning disabilities to receive incremental resources, over similar claims by students not diagnosed as having disabilities. In a world of limited resources, Kelman argues, it is plainly not enough to say that children with learning disabilities "deserve" more resources; their claims inevitably compete with claims that could be made by other needy youngsters, such as poor achievers, the socioeconomically disadvantaged, and the gifted but understimulated.
The author concludes that we will not make rational policy in this area until we see that many claims often made in debate over special education policy are important education issues but not proper civil rights claims.
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By Matthew Ladner & Christopher Hammons
It is well known that public schools place a disproportionate percentage of minority students into special education programs and classes. In Virginia, for example, African Americans represent 20 percent of the state's population but 28 percent of its special education students, including 51 percent of those labeled "educable mentally retarded."
Closely analyzing county- and district-level data, Drs. Ladner and Hammons find that:
There is no correlation between special education enrollment and per-pupil district expenditures;
The more urban a school district, the lower the percentage of minority students enrolled in special education programs in that district;
Districts with more white teachers have a greater rate of minority enrollment in special education, especially among African-American students, while enrollment by white students is unaffected by the racial composition of the faculty;
Districts with high percentages of minority students -- regardless of whether they are urban or rural, rich or poor -- tend to place fewer of their pupils in special education programs, and conversely, the whiter the school district the more apt are its minority kids to be sent to special education.
Drs. Ladner and Hammons's data indicate that race plays a powerful role in the placement of children in special education. In fact, race impacts special education enrollment rates far more than any other variable. Although there is likely no single overarching explanation that applies to all districts, the fact that the special education process is strongly impacted by race surely gives cause for concern as well as further research.
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By Robert Cullen
This chapter profiles a single elementary school in Manassas, Virginia. The author focuses especially on Marge Scheflen's classroom for second- to fifth-graders diagnosed with learning disabilities. In this case study, he describes how her classroom is designed for children deemed to have normal intelligence and abnormal needs and details how this teacher uses "guided reading strategies" to meet the specific needs of each student. He also profiles several youngsters, including a trio of hearing-impaired boys; an autistic, hearing-impaired kindergartner; and a fifth grader with reading and writing difficulties.
Cullen's observations and conclusions include:
The ratio of students to staff in Mrs. Scheflen's room never exceeded 4:1, suggesting why special education is costly;
About 18 pupils at the school take Ritalin or other medications intended to improve their ability to focus;Eighteen of Coles Elementary's 50 staff members are involved in special education;Special education in Prince William County, Virginia, is a classic case of unfunded mandates falling on the shoulders of local taxpayers; andThe difficult special education eligibility cases are the ones where a child has a learning disability and needs special help, yet his/her scores don't show a required 23-point gap between IQ and achievement.
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By Anna B. Duff
This chapter examines two Michigan school districts with good reputations for compliance with special education laws. The author shows how, in trying to ensure that special-needs children get an education, federal and state government have created a massive procedural maze that frustrates teachers, parents, and administrators alike.
Among her observations and conclusions:
The law states that, to get special education services, a student must need those services to overcome his or her disabilities, but differences in determining whether students "need" special education services can play a big role in how many students are eventually certified for the program;
The goals listed on a student's individualized education program (IEP) are supposed to be determined individually, but in fact most follow formulas set forth in statewide guides;
The focus on inclusion is not only changing the way that "regular education" classrooms work, it is also creating two important pressures on schools districts: the potential for rising costs due to the demand for paraprofessionals, and the potential for conflict with parents concerning the extent of children's "inclusion";
As courts have expanded the services that districts are required to fund, districts have become very aggressive in seeking out Medicaid payments to cover some special education expenses;
Increasing litigation of special education claims threatens what little ability school districts have to control costs; yet the same procedures that shield districts from litigation can also act as a ceiling on district efforts to provide a special education; and
Including students with disabilities in Michigan's testing regime will at the very least provide everyone -- parents, students, teachers, and districts -- clearer information about what is actually being achieved in special education.
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By Frederick M. Hess & Frederick J. Brigham
The authors of this case study examine how federal special education policy impacts public education in Virginia. Between 1995 and 1998, special education consumed 23 to 25 percent of the state's education budget, though disabled youngsters made up 13-14 percent of the state's student population. At the state Department of Education (DOE), federal special education initiatives are handled by a separate group of professionals; nobody is charged with coordinating policy with other parts of the agency. In essence, Virginia runs parallel school systems, one for general education and one for special education, and the current structure ensures that special education policy decisions are mostly made by people removed from actual school practice and from the general K-12 policy process.
Professors Hess and Brigham conclude that special education today is unwieldy, exasperating, and ripe for rethinking. They offer a number of observations, including:
Special education mandates force educators to abide by open-ended and nebulous directives;
The monitoring of special education relies upon documentation and paper trails, requiring much time and effort and forcing educators to base program decisions upon procedures rather that determinations of efficiency or effectiveness;
IEPs intended as flexible instruments of learning have evolved into written records of compliance with formal instruments;
Protections afforded to special education students in the domain of discipline have made it more difficult to enforce clear and uniform standards in school; and
As states (like Virginia) have moved toward a standards-based curriculum and a results-based accountability system, the question has arisen of how to track the progress of disabled students and whether they will be treated as part of the reformed education system or (reminiscent of pre-IDEA discrimination) as a separate educational world.
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By Sheldon Berman, Perry Davis, Ann Koufman-Frederick & David Urion
Spending on special education is always controversial. The past decade has witnessed rapid increases in both the number and percentage of children assigned to special education. At the same time, it has become more costly to provide them with special education, as special education averages 2.28 times the per-pupil cost of regular education.
The authors explore how special education costs compromise other school investments, creating a vicious cycle in which this program's rising costs result in less money for regular classrooms and fewer resources for struggling students, even as more students receive special education services leading to further increases in the program's costs. Although some people suspect that special education cost and enrollment increases result from school districts failing to contain costs and unnecessarily identifying children as having special needs, this Massachusetts study shows that school districts have done a good job containing costs but are being asked to serve increasing numbers of children with more significant special needs for more costly services.
The authors describe how advances in medical technology are boosting the survival rates of disabled infants and have also enabled other disabled students to attend school. Simultaneously, they argue, state policies and social norms have shifted away from the institutionalization of severely handicapped children, placing responsibility for them on local school districts. A rise in the number of children in poverty and dysfunctional family environments also results in more children with special needs.
In addition, the authors contend that Massachusetts' failure to adequately fund the education of youngsters with severe disabilities is compromising school districts' ability to implement the kinds of instructional improvements intended by the state's recent Education Reform Act. It would be tragic, they conclude, if education reform were declared a failure when, in fact, the Reform Act's experiment was never really tried.
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By Kevin J. Lanigan, Rose Marie L. Audette, Alexander E. Dreier & Maya R. Kobersy
The due process hearing is one of the most visible and unique features of the U.S. system for providing special education. The authors, four lawyers at a major Washington law firm, provide a historical background on the special education due process mandate and detail its statutory and regulatory framework. They observe that special education litigation under the IDEA boils down to two questions: Did the school district comply with procedural safeguards? And did it provide a FAPE? They note the widespread belief among school officials that the IDEA is one-sided, protecting parents and students while burdening schools and districts.
This chapter also provides an inside look at how due process hearings and special education litigation "really" work. The authors tell of delays and tactical posturing and the frustrations of parents seeking accommodations or new placements for their children. The current regime is complex and technical, thus quite difficult for parents to navigate successfully without legal representation or well-trained advocates. Indeed, due process does not lend itself to quick resolution of any dispute, unless both parties genuinely desire such a resolution. Particularly telling is the authors' case study of a 14-year-old mentally retarded girl whose mother unsuccessfully sought, for two years, to have her daughter placed in a full-time residential facility at public expense.
In discussing federal policy reforms, the authors call for better data on post-1997 mediation efforts as well as more research into the costs of due process litigation under the IDEA and possible alternative approaches.
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By Siobhan Gorman
This chapter offers case studies of the special education experiences of four very different families and offers insights into larger policy issues.
The first family is wealthy and has received high quality services for their handicapped son, but the family has had to supplement those services using its own resources, indicating that even a relatively affluent school district struggles to serve a fast growing population of special-needs students;
A middle-class family in rural North Carolina has struggled to obtain proper services for its learning-disabled son, eventually resorting to emotionally and financially taxing litigation, and finally sending the boy to a private school;
A District of Columbia family has a seventh-grade foster son who has reached seventh grade without learning to read, in large part because of failings in the regular education classrooms of his troubled urban school system; and
A lower-middle income family with several adopted children who have "social-emotional" disabilities has found that special education, especially for poor and minority children, has become a catchall for youngsters with all manner of problems.
When special education is used to respond to such divergent needs, the author contends, one-size-fits-all policies intended to protect children from falling through cracks may have the opposite effect. The varied experiences of these families provide a critical real-world counterpoint to the rhetorical generalizations that often surround special education. Gorman's chapter also highlights several important issues that deserve consideration: the influence of income, how schools define disabilities, and how the attitudes of parents and schools impact the services that students receive from special education.
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By G. Reid Lyon, Jack M. Fletcher, Sally E. Shaywitz, Bennett A. Shaywitz, Joseph K. Torgesen, Frank B. Wood, Anne Schulte & Richard Olson
Despite their high -- and rising -- incidence, learning disabilities (LD) include the least understood and most debated disabling conditions that affect school-aged children. This chapter's principal authors insist that debates over the definition and classification of LD; the diagnostic criteria and assessment practices used in the identification process; the content, intensity, and duration of instructional practices employed; and the policies and legal requirements that drive the identification and education of those with LD can all be informed by scientific data and recent research. They also contend that sufficient data exist to guide early identification and prevention programs for children at-risk for LD, particularly reading programs that benefit many of these youngsters, and they estimate that sound prevention programs should sharply reduce the numbers of children who are identified as LD and who typically require intensive, long-term special education programs. Indeed, they estimate that the number of children identified as poor readers and served through special education could be reduced by up to 70 percent through early identification and prevention programs. They also argue that, given what is known about LD, it is irresponsible for the federal government to continue policies dictating an inadequate identification process for LD. Instead, the relevant government agencies should develop evidence-based alternatives for identifying LD, specific strategies to implement these alternatives, and a research and policy agenda to ensure that these youngsters are phased into the regular classroom as quickly as possible.
Drs. Lyon and Fletcher and their colleagues also recommend improvements in the definition of LD. They say we should:
Replace the current exclusionary definition with evidence-based definitions that specify precise characteristics necessary to identify children with LD in reading, mathematics, written expression, and oral language;
Jettison the IQ-achievement gap as a primary marker for LD;
Stop excluding from consideration for special education youngsters who are performing poorly due to inadequate instruction, cultural and social factors, and emotional disturbance; and
Consider a student's response to well-designed and well-implemented early intervention and remediation programs as part of the identification of LD.
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By Daniel McGroarty
The author examines special education as a genre of school choice. He notes that this branch of American public education gives parents more choices, control, and involvement than any other. We learn, for example, that public school districts are paying private school tuitions for approximately 2 percent of the nation's 5.6 million special-needs students, or about 126,000 children, at an estimated annual cost to taxpayers of $2 billion.
Because the degree of choice extended to special-needs students depends in large part on parents' pushiness, it should come as no surprise, McGroarty writes, that in many school districts there is not one special education program but two, separate and unequal. This dual system, keyed to parents' differing levels of savvy and persistence, unlawfully deprives some special-needs students of essential services while providing others with a premium private education at public expense.
McGroarty asks, "Is it possible to remedy the inequities of the de facto 'choice' system that exists in special education at present, not by eliminating the degree of parental choice that exists for some families, but by extending greater choice to all parents of special-needs students?" To answer this question, he examines several places where school choice programs now operate. These include Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Florida, which has a remarkable but little-known program to "voucherize" special education. He concludes that school choice might well be a way to serve special-needs students in keeping with the expansive ideal that originally animated the IDEA.
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By Bryan C. Hassel & Patrick J. Wolf
Continuing their analysis from Chapter 3, the authors consider what alternatives to the "compliance model" might be available to promote outcome-based measures of achievement and real accountability for performance with respect to the education of disabled youngsters. They first examine alternatives to compliance that have arisen outside K-12 education. These include "smart regulation," incentives for performance, and customer choice.
Drs. Hassel and Wolf then develop a broad framework for the application of these approaches within special education. Their framework would make student learning results the central driving force of special education policy, not an overlay on a compliance system. Their proposal is guided by three principles:
An obsession with educational results rather than inputs and processes;
A big "toolbox," permitting the selection of multiple strategies so as to provide the incentives and flexibility to enable problems to be solved; and
Retention of certain needed residual rules, meant to support the overall results-orientation of the system by ensuring that goals are set for student learning, results are measured, and a safety net remains in place.
Noting that the accountability system governing special education is already moving away from a "one-size-fits-all" compliance system, Drs. Hassel and Wolf call on policymakers to accelerate this evolutionary process.
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By Chester E. Finn, Jr., Andrew J. Rotherham & Charles R. Hokanson, Jr.
The volume's editors argue that the past 25 years' record of accomplishment for disabled youngsters is at best half the story. They also believe that federal special education policy is deeply troubled. The choice confronting today's policymakers, they contend, is not between keeping the program as it is or returning to the unacceptable pre-IDEA education of the disabled, but rather between maintaining the status quo or modernizing the program, building on what is known about both special education and regular education.
In recent years, K-12 education in the United States has undergone a profound shift from access-and-services to results-and-accountability. Special education hasn't kept up. It is also out of sync with profound organizational changes elsewhere in K-12 education and in the world outside.
The editors identify a number of policy failures in need of attention:
Many youngsters' preventable and remediable conditions are growing into intractable problems;
Special education suffers from "mission creep" as it keeps growing, causing its goals to become unattainable, its operation impossibly complex and costly, and its purpose cloudy;
The one-size-fits-all approach has created a legal and policy straitjacket, creating a system that is full of adversarial procedures, rife with litigation, unresponsive to innovation, discouraging to diversity, and hostile to creativity;
The IDEA creates perverse incentives for educators, schools, and parents alike;
Special education distorts the priorities and fractures the programmatic coherence of schools and school systems;
Different rules for disabled children foster a "separate but unequal" system; and
Special education collides with standards-based education reform, exempting many students (and the educators and schools that serve them) from meeting state or district academic standards, even as such standards are being strengthened for "regular" education.
To address these and other policy failures, the editors urge policymakers to consider six principles for reforming special education:
Make IDEA standards- and performance-based wherever possible, using Section 504 as the civil rights underpinning of special education;
Streamline the number of special education categories into a very few groupings;
Focus on prevention and intervention wherever possible, using research-based practices;
Encourage flexibility, innovation, and choice, allowing schools to work with students and parents to customize services and placements to meet varying needs, and fostering the integration of special education into the school's larger mission, while giving parents sound options for their children's education;
Provide adequate funding to ensure the program's success; and
End double standards wherever possible.
The editors urge policymakers to question the status quo, explore ways to improve education for youngsters, and not shy away from efforts to ensure that all young Americans receive the education they deserve. This process will require openness to criticism and fresh ideas, a willingness to entertain reforms, and a capacity to change.
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