3 Shifts To Address Learning Loss For SWD
Best practices show the way
Despite much effort, many caring teachers and ever increasing spending, too many students with disabilities, including many students with mild to moderate disabilities, fail to master grade level content and graduate with the skills needed for success in life. The educational disruption caused by the pandemic has left many students with disabilities with unfinished learning. Fortunately, research from John Hattie, the What Works Clearing House and achievement gap closing schools show the way. These practices have reduced the achievement gap by 67% and pared the number of struggling readers by 65%.
Focus On Core Instruction
Students with mild to moderate disabilities benefit greatly from receiving 100% of core instruction, highly engaged classroom teachers, and receiving additional services on top of, not instead of, general education instruction. Students with disabilities, however, often receive less core instruction and less attention from their skilled classroom teacher, than students who don't struggle. This happens because too often students are pulled from math or reading in order to get IEP mandated services. These services are best provided at other times during the school day.
After studying and building hundreds of schedules, I have always been able to ensure that all services are provided, but never pulling out during reading and math. This is possible if the master schedule staggers when reading and math is taught. The whole school can’t schedule reading at 9:00 am. Then individual student scheduling needs to be a team sport. The principal and all the special ed staff should be in the same room, at the same time, building all the schedules as a set. This way there is easy give and take concerning when each student is available. If each special educator, related service provider and classroom teacher schedules on their own, the puzzle gets too complicated.
Extra Time To Learn
Not all students learn at the same pace. Some will need more time to catch up. For students struggling with prior grade level knowledge gaps, extra time to fill in this missed learning is doubly important. Post pandemic, this need is magnified. As DuFour aptly noted, “Learning should be the constant, and time the variable.”
This extra time should include:
Daily extra instructional time. This is in addition to, not instead of, core instruction. At the elementary level, this is easiest if the master schedule has an intervention/enrichment block or What I Need (WIN) time period. Often this means integrating social studies into the reading block or alternating science and social studies each day.
At the secondary level, this becomes a course to be scheduled like any other via the master scheduling software. Typically, students will delay taking a foreign language class for a year or two, perhaps not have resource room, or if only 3 years of science, for example, are needed for graduation, a freshman would postpone 9th grade science to make time for intervention. Seldom do students need to lose an elective.
Subject specific: If math is the challenge, then time dedicated specially for teacher led instruction is needed, rather than generalized homework help.
Grouped by area of need: Extra help should be focused on student specific skill gaps such as phonics or fluency. Creating flexible groups of students with similar needs supercharges instruction. At the elementary level this can be streamlined by using existing common formative assessments to pinpoint area of need and regrouping once every 2 to 4 weeks. If the entire grade has intervention at the same time, regrouping is not very disruptive because the time of day doesn’t change, just the room assignment.
Content Strong Teachers
Who is in the front of the class matters greatly. Students with disabilities deserve teachers with deep expertise in the content they are teaching. Anything less is unlikely to close the stubborn achievement gap.
Special education teachers and special education paraprofessionals are great, but like all of us, they aren't great at everything. Research is clear, nothing matters more in raising achievement than the skills of the teacher. For catching up academically, a commitment to content strong instructors is key. The implications are profound:
Focus on skills, not certification: Students who struggle to read need skilled reading teachers. Students who struggle in math benefit from experts in math. This includes some special educators and some general educators, but not all educators are content strong.
General educators can help. IEP services and needs can be well served by math, English and reading teachers, as well as special educators.
The biggest challenge to overcome is accepting that no teacher is strong in every subject and every task. Staff can quickly self-identify their strengths and scheduling ceases to treat each teacher as interchangeable. OTs are never scheduled to do speech and language. If staff are identified in the scheduling software or in the mind of the scheduler as strong in math or strong in reading and scheduled accordingly both kids and teachers benefit.
Two Practices To Reconsider
The three best practices above, when implemented as a set, have dramatically increased outcomes for students with mild to moderate special needs. Many observers have commented that they are just common sense recommendations. They are, but they are not common practice. Surprisingly two very popular strategies are in direct opposition to the best practices.
Co-teaching and push-in don’t provide extra time. Often schools have only enough staff to provide one type of extra help. Extra time to learn is essential.
Paraprofessionals are seldom content strong teachers. Paraprofessionals play a critically important role in the lives of students with disabilities, but they are typically not well suited to provide academic intervention or reading support.