SpedPro

Research funds in perspective

By JohnL on Apr. 19, 2008.

The Council for Exceptional Children generated a graphic that allows one to see the relative US federal funding for research in various areas. It’s a pretty clear indication of the importance attached to addressing the improvement of education, no? I’ve linked a larger version of the file to the image at the right. It’s suitable for downloading.

To be sure, there are some funds in the NIH and NSF research budgets that go toward educational research. For example, some of the funds from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development fund research on Autism and Learning Disabilities. I do not know what proportion of those budgets are devoted to such educationally relevant topics, but I bet that it’s a small proportion.

New Bogus Bowl on TE

By JohnL on Apr. 6, 2008.

I posted a new entry in the series about disingenuous reasons educators use in explaining their practices. This one is predicated on contemporary rejection of testing. Follow this link to cast your vote.

JANE 4 sped?

By JohnL on Feb. 20, 2008.

Given the proliferation of professional journals in special education, it might seem difficult to determine appropriate places to publish one’s work. Of course, we surely don’t have as much difficulty as those in biological sciences, where journals focused on sub-sub-specialities exist. To help folks in those disciplines, perhaps a dose of artificial intelligence would be helpful.

In “Reducing the cost of facilitating peer review,” Peter Suber described and commented on a script that recommends journals that would be suitable outlets for one’s writings. Mr. Suber’s post, which appeared in Nature Network, referred to a Martijn J. Schuemie and Jan A. Kors’ “Jane: Suggesting Journals, Finding Experts” from Bioinformatics. Here’s a snippet from Mr. Steel:

Abstract: With an exponentially growing number of articles being published every year, scientists can use some help in determining which journal is most appropriate for publishing their results, and which other scientists can be called upon to review their work.

Jane (Journal/Author Name Estimator) is a freely available web-based application that, on the basis of a sample text (e.g., the title and abstract of a manuscript), can suggest journals and experts who have published similar articles.

I recall the advice of a writing professor with whom I studied as an undergraduate. He told me I should submit a piece of short fiction to a magazine and then, in preparation for receiving a rejection, address envelopes to other magazine editors where I would hope it would be published and stuff each envelope with a submission letter. I should then stack those envelopes in the order of my estimate of their magazines’ prestige. If it was rejected by one I was simply to put a copy of the ms. in the next envelope in the stack and mail it in the next day’s mail.

I also recall the sage comment of my colleague Mike E., who said something similar. He finished his recommendation with a maxim: “John, for every manuscript, there is a journal.”

More about JANE:
Mr. Schuemie and Mr. Kors’ original. “Jane: Suggesting Journals, Finding Experts”
Mr. Suber’s Reducing the cost of facilitating peer review
Savvy comment from Nature blog by Maxine Clarke (here) and an unsigned note here and >.

Presidential candidates’ views

By JohnL on Feb. 10, 2008.

Late last week, Christina A. Samuels, the special ed beat writer for Education Week posted an entry on US political candidates’ views about disabilities and education. Writing under the title “Presidential Candidates and Spec Ed,” Ms. Samuels started her post with these words:

They may have other policy differences, but when it comes to special education, Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and Republican John McCain all want the same thing for states–more money.

My colleague Michele McNeil has already written in her lively blog about Clinton’s pledge to “fully-fund” the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

I hope someone is standing up when there are opportunities and asking candidates questions about how US policy on special education will change in the next few years. One of my big fears is that the next round of IDEA will actually see efforts to disenfranchise some students with disabilities. Can we expect any candidate to understand the intricacies of such policies?

Read the entire post here.

Bill Morse

By admin on Jan. 29, 2008.

Over on EBD Blog there’s post reporting the death of William C. Morse, long-time special education professional.

Consortium to Prevent School Violence

By mayerma on Dec. 28, 2007.

Dear Colleagues,

The new Consortium to Prevent School Violence website is up and running at: http://www.preventschoolviolence.org (alternate URL: http://www.ctpsv.org).

Consortium Mission: The Consortium to Prevent School Violence is committed to assisting educators and schools in the reduction of school violence.

Consortium Goals: The Consortium seeks to foster high quality research on school violence prevention; communication among researchers, practitioners and policy makers; dissemination of research-based information regarding effective school violence reduction programs; technical assistance and professional development that aid in implementing effective school violence reduction practices; and advocacy of effective research-based solutions to policy makers.

Consortium History: The Consortium grew out of efforts that followed the tragic Amish school shootings of Fall, 2006. A group of 20 researchers and practitioners in the field of school violence prevention collaborated on the creation of a nationally disseminated position statement on the school shootings. In the process, it became apparent that an alliance of researchers and practitioners in school violence prevention to further the common goal of reducing school violence would be highly valuable.

Current Consortium projects include:

• Brief and practical fact sheets for use by teachers, school administrators, parents, and others working in schoolrelated settings, offering concise, understandable, and usable research-based recommendations for practice. Topics will include: screening and referring at-risk students for help; bullying prevention; gangs in schools; threat assessment in schools; working with students with a history of academic failure and behavioral problems; school-family partnerships to address behavioral problems; mentoring programs for at-risk youth; and others as needs are identified.
• Usable research briefs by leading researchers, targeting critical topic areas, such as bullying prevention, zero tolerance, school-accessible evidence-based interventions, youth gun access and guns in schools, and school resource officers. The briefs, which summarize extant knowledge of the topic, will be designed for an end-user audience of school staff, local school and school district administrators, professional training personnel, and policymakers and legislators at the state and federal level.
• Staff training PowerPoints for school violence prevention which include speaker notes and support resources, for use in schools, local youth service agencies, and other organizations concerned with school violence. The PowerPoints will be designed for use by professional trainers who may have general but not highly specific knowledge of school violence prevention. The PowerPoints will be geared to support training sessions for use in in-service programs, workshops, and other professional training venues.
• Effective practices video in which national experts share key lessons learned from school violence prevention research and practice. The video, as envisioned, approximately 35-40 minutes in length, will feature approximately 15 national experts, each briefly highlighting important bottom line findings. The video will be developed along critical themes such as school wide programming, early intervention, fostering connectedness, providing mental health and other supports, threat assessment, and crisis management.

All research-based materials posted on the Consortium website are evaluated and approved by the Consortium’s expert review panel of distinguished scholars.

Please share the URL with colleagues. Thank you.

Matthew Mayer
Rutgers University

Is special education a taxing entitlement?

By mgerb50 on Dec. 26, 2007.

In a 20 December editorial entitled “The Special Education Bridge to Nowhere” published by Vermont Tiger, Curtis Hier published the accompanying editorial.

The recent study by the Joint Fiscal Office on our tax burden in Vermont reminds me of another JFO study done a few years ago. In 2001, the JFO was put in charge of studying special education costs. It enlisted a working group that included special educators, professional disability advocates, and the “Big Three” of the education lobby — including, of course, Joel Cook of the Vermont-NEA.

Given the makeup of the working group, it should not be a surprise that the study identified growing costs that were beyond anybody’s control, and it recommended that the problem be studied further. Herein lies the problem of special education cost containment. Those who potentially have the answers to the problem of spending are the stakeholders who benefit from the spending.

At Vermont Tiger (www.vermonttiger.com), we have some great ideas for identifying and tackling the real cost drivers of education spending in Vermont. And we have some great resources at our disposal. We are a nonprofit organization that promotes sound and sustainable economic growth in Vermont.

We’ve started to post regular investigative reports on our site that expose certain practices of the education community, and we are watching particularly for examples of ineffective spending. In special education, while there are dedicated professionals and certainly pockets of success throughout Vermont, there are plenty of examples to be found of inefficient spending and poor results. And looking at the results statewide, it appears that we’re building a virtual bridge to nowhere.

Special education spun out of control in the 1990s. Special education professional staff increased by 42 percent, while paraprofessional staff increased by an amazing 139 percent. Overall special education expenditures rose at a rate of 150 percent. We went from spending $51 million to spending $128 million on these programs.

Since Act 117 was passed in 2000, special education programs have slowed their growth rate a bit. They had to. They couldn’t possibly maintain the pace of the 1990s. Still, the growth is formidable. Now we spend well over $200 million on these programs. And yet, despite the spending levels, we are seeing abysmally low and essentially flat achievement scores among special needs students.

Part of the problem has been that the cost drivers have been overstated and taken advantage of by the special education community. For instance, there is a perception that litigation is common and that parents always win. But in the last three years, 13 due process cases were disposed of by hearing officers. Six decisions clearly found for the school district. Five found for the parents. And two included partial findings. Three of the 13 cases ended up in court. That’s not bad for 350 local education agencies over a three-year period.

Another cost driver, seemingly beyond our control, would be the increasing number of low incidence disabilities, such as autism, that are being diagnosed in recent years. These disabilities are cost-intensive. But not every school sees a net increase in these cases every year. Some occasionally see a net decrease. However, schools do not tend to take advantage of the savings opportunities that occur when that happens. While there are certainly fixed costs involved in serving children with severe disabilities, there are some variable costs as well. Contrary to popular belief, special education enrollment has not been trending upward, especially as general student enrollments are going down. Schools that see lower special education enrollments should realize some savings. No rational business would ever lower production and want to keep paying the same amount of money on variable costs.

Clearly there are opportunities for savings in staffing levels. Professor Michael Giangreco has been doing some great work on special education staffing patterns at the University of Vermont. Although he insists that his ideas are “cost-neutral” proposals, his findings could potentially offer ways to reduce significantly our cost burdens. Our current staffing patterns are arguably failing to meet the “least restrictive environment” test of special education law. We can do a better job meeting that test while actually reducing staffing costs. Vermont Tiger will be shedding more light on this subject, as we attempt to build a less expensive bridge to somewhere.

Recently our organization hosted a symposium that explored the question of whether Vermont is to become an entrepreneurial state or a land of entitlements. Special education is an entitlement that is adding to public sector job growth in Vermont. The overall trend of public sector jobs replacing private sector jobs is a disturbing phenomenon in Vermont. It needs to be addressed. And we at Vermont Tiger have been and will continue to be addressing it.

If I understand Mr. Hier, he’s suggesting that all the “cost drivers” that we often hear cited by special education fiscal critics—e.g., increasing identifications, court cases, etc.—are not what keeps special education costs “out of control” in Vermont. He seems to suggest instead that its staffing costs that are not adjusted downwards when special education enrollment drops and, also, that better (more?) implementation of the LRE criterion would bring costs down.

In theory (and in policy), the cost of special education is intended to be variable because it’s based on the aggregate value of all individual educational plans which, in principle, are individually calculated.

Not knowing exactly how much it costs to get to any yearly acheivement target, a rational system would invest steadily in professional development since the aggregate costs of special education cannot trend downwards if capacity stays constant. So one could just as reasonably argue that Vermont hasn’t spent enough on professional development. But, then, we still wouldn’t have any way of knowing if the current expenditures map well against the actual need or not since no one attempts to measure what it really would cost to reach actual IEP goals.

I do not know about Vermont’s special education service structure, but I’m willing to bet that the 139% increase in paraprofessional costs has paralleled increased inclusion (what Mr. Hier seems to be arguing will reduce costs).

The fact is that states have not figured out how you can effectively divide a single special education teacher by the number of classrooms where students with disabilities are placed. Therefore, paraprofessional costs—typically undertrained paraprofessionals—as a percentage of special education has gone up (everywhere).

If I’m right, some of the maintenance, if not increase, in costs might be associated with inclusion as it is practiced in Vermont. This would be a disappointment for policymakers who supported an expansion of inclusion in 1990, thinking that it would bring special education costs down.

We could, of course, withdraw paraprofessionals and expect regular classroom teachers to carry the full responsibility, but alas that would take some significant and ongoing investment in professional development, effectively moving the cost from paraprofessional support to professional development. And, it isn’t clear to me that classroom teachers would readily accept that full responsibility.

That one should expect special education to be expensive is not news at this point. What would be news would be if anyone, anywhere had the least idea what it should cost to assure meaningful learning outcomes for students with IEPs.

But, for that matter, no one knows what it really costs, say, to teach non-disabled children to read. Fact is, we have no idea what outcomes-based education really costs.

I don’t think that States really want to know because it’s likely to be many times what we spend now.

Instead, as seen in NCLB, the policy strategy is to set outcome expectations with relatively fixed revenue (with some guessed at supplement from federal contributions). If you can’t adjust revenues to match needs, then the only movable part left is teaching effectiveness and effort which, as I noted above, come at a cost, too.

It is on this same issue, by the way, that RTI will fail. As a rational strategy for allocating scarce instructional resources, RTI is sensible. Devote these resources to students who really need more intensive and extensive instruction based on progress monitoring. However, the entire strategy falls apart if the primary level of instruction—what the classroom teacher provides—is not, at least, very good. If it isn’t, then scarce resources will be allocated to compensate for not-so-good teaching rather than innate limitations of students.

The only way out of this is, again, significant investment in professional development, the same place we end up in pursuing special education’s real costs. It shouldn’t surprise us. Special education, all along, has been a system for responding to the perceived unresponsiveness of students under conditions of typical instrution (beginning way back when Elizabeth Farrell taught at P. S. 1 in NYC). Although the technical skills of teachers in 1901 may have been somewhat limited, the principle remains unchanged that there will always be relatively “unresponsive” learners if baseline instruction occurs in large groups of students who are variable in their ability to respond to whatever the prevailing method or technology of instruction might be.

So, I fear that Mr. Hier’s and Vermont’s problem of special education costs is technically unsolvable in the foreseeable future

It is, of course, politically solvable.

Mr. Hier or others could convince voters to spend less to get more. In the world of politics we spend according to what we collectively—by vote—value, even when the benefits derived from that spending are muddy (as in proscecuting wars, for example).

Any proposal to cut spending will be met with sizable resistance from parents, special educators, and other advocates. Of course, these folks (us) do not have any better idea what the real spending number ought to be. We merely suspect (rightly, I believe) that it should be higher, certainly not lower. But, if Mr. Hier or others have or gain more votes, they win. In one sense, a reauthorized NCLB that reduces the requirement for making progress for students with disabilities, accomplishes something of the same end. That is, if schools do not have to demonstrate progress by students with disabilities, such a policy invites schools to make less, not more, effort for these students regardless of their inclusion status.

Laws change; reality doesn’t. It won’t change a thing in the schools, of course. School folks will still be pinned between the requirements of effort mandated in IDEA (unless IT is changed as well) and whatever cost-cutting policies are adopted in Vermont or elsewhere. And children with disabilities will still be at very high risk for learning failure.

If you don’t live in Vermont, don’t worry. There’s some version of “Vermont” everywhere these days. There can be no rest for advocates.

Michael Gerber
Professor
University of California Santa Barbara

To read Mr. Hier’s complete editorial in its original form, follow this link.

NAEP and accommodations

By JohnL on Dec. 13, 2007.

Are accommodations for students with disabilities compromising the integrity of scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress? According to a story by Elizabeth Green in the New York (NY, US) Sun, educators are considering that question closely. Ms. Green reported that, “Responding to mounting concerns about the validity of a test considered the gold standard for measuring American students, federal officials are pushing for a change in how the test is administered.”
Read the rest of this entry »

Vouchers and special education

By JohnL on Nov. 9, 2007.

A news story from the Salt Lake (UT, US)Tribune that ran prior to the defeat of the Utah initiative to implement a system of vouchers for K-12 education mentioned concern about private schools refusing to accept students with disabilities.

One thing Utah vouchers foes fear is that private schools will refuse to take expensive special education students, leaving them in public schools with less money to educate them.

This got me thinking (often a dangerous process): What do we really know about implementation of voucher systems? Do schools operating under voucher policies dis- or mis-serve students with disabilities? I searched quickly and found an article by Susan Etscheidt, but little more (abstract appended).

Do any ‘pros know of unpublished studies about this matter?

Etscheidt, S. (2005). Vouchers and students with disabilities: A multidimensional analysis. Journal of Disability Policy Studies, 16, 156-168.

School choice initiatives such as open enrollment, magnet schools, charter schools, and voucher plans have been offered as methods of school reform. A publicly funded voucher plan in Florida targeting students with disabilities was considered as a possible model for the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Although the model was not adopted in the reauthorized law, the potential impact of such voucher plans must be examined. The empirical evidence regarding the impact of vouchers on parent choice, student achievement, and fiscal school management is inconclusive and incomplete. Further, the impact of voucher plans on educational programs for students with disabilities has not been thoroughly studied. Such an examination requires a multiparadigmatic analysis of legal, economic, academic, sociological, and political dimensions.

Link to the Tribune article.

Closing centers

By JohnL on Jul. 19, 2007.

The Maryland (MD, US) state department of education is moving to close special education facilities, requiring students to attend neighborhood schools instead, according to a story entitled “Special-ed backers scramble to save learning centers” by Marcus Moore. In his article, published in Gazette Net, Mr. Moore reported that Maryland Superintendent Jerry D. Weast has accelerated the time line for closing the special education centers.
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