Revamping special education

Public Interest, Summer, 2001 by Wade F. Horn, Douglas Tynan

Training for a lifetime of entitlement

Another consequence of the expansion of disability categories is that low- and underachieving students are being handled by an "accommodation model," when other approaches--prevention, intervention, and compensatory strategies--would better suit their needs. When initially passed in 1975, FL 94-142 was largely intended to ensure that students with significant physical and sensory disabilities were not denied a free and appropriate public education. For these students, the right approach was, and remains, to make public education accessible through the use of access ramps for those in wheelchairs, books written in Braille for the blind, and sign-language interpreters for the deaf. There was no expectation that special education would, by itself, ameliorate the physical or sensory handicap, thereby making these accommodations no longer necessary.

There are, however, subgroups of students with disabilities for whom it is reasonable to expect that special education will help them overcome or compensate for their handicapping condition, so that they no longer need special services or accommodations. For example, special education ought to ameliorate emotional and behavioral disorders so that students with these disorders no longer need alternative placements. Similarly, when working with students with SLD, ADD, and ADHD, the goal should be to help them learn self-directed compensatory strategies so they can succeed without the aid of special services. For example, children with ADHD could be taught, through guided practice and positive reinforcement, how to use an assignment pad and how to better organize their backpacks or desks. An accommodation strategy would merely assign an aide to keep track of the student's work. In other words, for many in special education the goal can--and should--be independence, rather than a lifetime of dependence on specia l accommodations, often at taxpayers' expense.

Unfortunately, special education has largely failed to help most of its students achieve such independence. Instead, most special-education students under IDEA can expect to receive its services and accommodations until they leave school. According to data collected from 16 states in 1993 by the Department of Education, only 1 to 12 percent of special-education students over the age of 14 years are declassified each year. Other policy developments, such as the accommodations provided under the Americans with Disabilities Act, reinforce the tendency toward permanent accommodations for disabilities, even those that can be remediated.

Contributing further to this problem is the focus within both the federal and state systems on due process requirements and fiscal management rather than educational results. Local schools are told they are "doing it right" when they strictly adhere to the procedures that govern eligibility for services and, once a child is found eligible, the development of an Individual Education Plan (IEP). A committee comprised of school personnel and the child's parents puts together the IEP, which sets specific goals for the child and identifies settings in which the child is to achieve those goals. Current oversight efforts also focus on whether schools provide parents with proper procedural safeguards and responsibly draw down funds. Federal accountability systems pay little attention to whether students in special education are advancing in core subjects or acquiring the skills to make special education no longer necessary.