Students With Disabilities Deserve Better!
Better outcomes, enhanced inclusion, and more fulfilling lives after graduation. Far too many students with special needs struggle in school and struggle as adults. This, despite hardworking, talented and caring staff, and ever increasing spending. These students need better, but not more of the same. For the last 30 years districts have hoped that a couple more services written into IEPs, a few more teacher, and a bunch more paraprofessionals and will turn the tide.
Three interconnected shifts can and have made all the difference.
The three shifts seem common sense to many, even if not common practice. Research from the What works Clearing How, the National Reading Panel, John Hattie's Visible Learning and the Rennie Center for Education Policy and Research underpin these practices. Real life results from schools across the county underscore their impact.
1. From special education to general education
Students, especially those with mild to moderate disabilities, spend the majority of the day in the general education classroom. This good, but despite years of focus on inclusion, students with disabilities often receive less core instruction and less attention from their skilled classroom teacher, than students who don't struggle. This happens in two ways.
Pullout during core: 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.
Transferred responsibility: Too often general education teachers are expecting or hoping that special educators will provide the needed instruction to help students master grade level content. General education has to be the first line of effective instruction for all students
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.
2. From more adults to more time
Central to the last few decades of efforts to better serve students with disabilities is the belief that more staff and smaller group sizes, even 1 on 1 services, will finally help many more children succeed. Unfortunately despite dramatic increase in special education staffing, achievement has held flat. Schools and districts that have moved need needle emphasize more instructional time, not more instructors. This includes:
Daily extra instructional time. This is in addition to, not instead of, core instruction.
Subject specific extra help: If math is the challenge, then time dedicated specially for teacher led instruction is needed, rather than generalized homework help.
Groupings 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.
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.
3. From generalists to specialists
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. Students with disabilities deserve the strongest teachers. For catching up academically this means teachers with deep content expertise. 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.
Emphasize certified staff: Paraprofessionals play an important role in the lives of many students, but they are seldom the most skilled reading, math or English teachers.
Who is in the front of the class matters greatly,. Students with disabilities deserve the strongest teachers in each school. Anything less is unlikely to close the stubborn achievement gap.
Can you afford this?
If these three shifts seem appealing, not need to worry how to pay for them. Schools and districts across the country have been able to implement these new approaches without additional funding. They cost no more than current practices and sometimes a bit less. Not only can districts afford to fully implement these shifts in practice, students can't afford to wait.
What Success Looks Like
One district had more students with disabilities score proficient or better on the state assessments than the statewide average for general education students. Overall, they had the highest achievement of students with disabilities in the state and fully embraced the 6 shifts.
One district reduced the special ed-general ed achievement gap in both math and English by circa 40 points at the high school level over three years.
One district increased the number of students with disabilities making more than a year’s gain by 20% in both math and English district wide over 2 years.
One district tripled the number struggling freshmen reaching grade level in math, from 21% at grade level to 67% over 2 years.