Finite Resources, Increasing Demands: Rural Children Left Behind? Educators Speak Out on Issues Facing Rural Special Education

Rural Special Education Quarterly, Summer 2006 by Mitchem, Katherine, Kossar, Kalie, Ludlow, Barbara L

Rural Special Education held in Orlando, FL, in March 2004. A low response rate at the conference led to the redesign of the survey as an online form that could be distributed nationwide. A cover message plus the URL for the survey was emailed to subscribers to and reviewers of Rural Special Education Quarterly, all state offices of education, and several parent advocacy groups. Surveys were also sent to key colleagues across the country, who were asked to forward the message to appropriate stakeholders. In addition, a letter was mailed to colleges and universities with a rural service area with a request for prospective participants to complete the online survey. Finally, at the annual conference of the Teacher Education Division of the Council for Exceptional Children held in Albuquerque, NM in November 2004, preliminary findings were presented and attendees were invited to complete the survey both in the presentation and at a display table. A total of 278 responses were recorded. The findings from questions one through eight of the survey were reported previously (Kossar, Mitchem, & Ludlow, 2005). The focus of this paper is a qualitative analysis of participant responses to the open-ended questions designed to elicit their original perceptions of the NCLBA mandates and their implications for rural schools.

Data Analysis

Qualitative research methods (Bogdan & Biklen, 1998) were utilized to examine responses to questions 9 through 13 of the NCLBA survey. Data were analyzed inductively, reflective of interpretivist research traditions (Lincoln & Cuba, 1985; Maxwell, 1996). All responses to each question were read and coded by responsibility (special education or general education); by role (educator, administrator, teacher educator, or other (related services specialist, parent, etc.); and by geographic area (using the national regional commission service areas). The content was then coded into common emergent themes. Due to the open-ended nature of these questions, a participant could have identified several concerns within one answer. As such, more than one theme could have been identified and coded for a specific question. To establish inter-rater reliability, two of the researchers in this study independently coded each response into a theme or number of themes, then compared each response and corresponding theme category. Response codings that were not agreed upon were discussed and agreement was sought. Final interrater reliability on all questions was higher than 95%.

Results

Coded responses were compared by responsibility (special education or non special education) and role (educator, administrator, teacher educator, and other) to identify similarities and differences across groups; responses were unevenly distributed across geographic areas, so no comparisons were made for those data. The results for each question are outlined below accompanied by tables and illustrated with representative respondent comments.

Question #9. Documentation of Highly Qualified Teacher Status