Variation in Special Education Populations

Updated, see below the fold

Here's a key question.  How many kids should be receiving special education services, statistically speaking?  If, in a district or Special Education Local Plan Area (SELPA)  the numbers vary radically from year to year, should that be a warning signal to administrators or parents that something is amiss in the identification process?

I am always thinking of Charlie Fox's maxim:

Complexity is messy. The issues of children with special needs are messy.  Educating children with special needs is messy. Schools do not do messy well; they do simple, tidy and predictable.  Therein lies one of the inherent tensions in the relationship between parents and schools.

What made me think of this was an article from Nevada on the variation within the state.  I have an acquaintance in Nevada who has been home-schooling her child, because her local district refused to provide services for this child's many and complex issues, insisting that the child no longer qualified for special education, because the child tested at grade level.  I saw the child's psychoeducational evaluation.  At some tests, more than two standard devations above the mean; at others, more than one below....

The Life That Chose Me.

Case in point: In the state of Georgia, students with any developmental delay has a diagnosis of SDD until they are 7. SDD = Significant Developmental Delay. In Magnolia County, there were precious few students who came through the eligibility process with the "Autism" eligibility. A medical diagnosis and an educational eligibility are entirely different and one is not necessarily related to the other. Just because the child's neurologist diagnoses your child on the autistic spectrum does not mean the school automatically makes "autism" their eligibility.

IDA Discussion Forum - please help! im so lost with this.

HI my name is michele and my son owen is in the 3rd grade (should be 4th) but they held him back a year in 2nd, anyways.... he was tested in kindergarden and found to have dyslexia, took forever to get the school system to give him any help and that is why he repeated 2nd grade. Well i thought i would get help once we had all the private test done but that isnt happening, yes he does have an IEP and it says that he has modifications for reading and all subjects and i did see some improvement last year at the other school he was goin to it was a very slow process but he was getting pulled down to a room for some one on one reading and spelling and math, so as fustrating as it was i was able to see some improvement... we moved at the end of the school year and this year he is going to a new school (same county) but things are VERY different... he is only going down to see the special ed teacher for math...the special ed teacher pops into the reg class to help out with everyones reading... so there is no one on one, he is givin a 3rd reading and spelling book when his reading level is 1.2 and has been for 3 years with no change. They are telling me that its frederick countys new policy that he has to read on grade level, which is fustrating considering he cant even read on a first grade level. He cant have a title one reading teacher becasuse he has an IEP they tell me that is double dipping and he cant have it. Said that he will have to read out of this 3rd grade book and that is the only option. With his spellin they told me they would start a new list just for him well that lasted a few weeks and now we are back to the 3rd grade list, how fustrating can it be when you cant always remember how to spell your name and they want to give you a spelling list with 3 ways to spell the same word, he told me it was a mean trick and he doesnt know why she is doin this to him. He was just last year starting the 2nd grade reading book and that was hard. He is even telling me he needs that book because he didnt finish it and that he doesnt know what to do and feels that he is stupid in there. He wants to go back to his old school and is very good at telling you why he says that his other teachers helped him and he liked to read there. So i just dont know what to do im not getting anywhere with them, i cant keep goin on like this he isnt making any progress, i dont know what to do, they see me coming and its just the same thing, tell me he is doin fine when his grades cleary show he is not, and hope that i leave and dont come back. I dont want him to grow up not being able to read and that is what is going to happen if i cant find some help. Me and my husband both struggled with this in school, so i dont really feel im the best teacher for him, i mean i can study with him and things like that but he really needs to be in a good school with and good teacher and i can just reinforce what he learned there. So any ideas would be great, i just feel like everywhere is a road block, and my family seems to think its a simple as forcing him to sit there and do the work or tell the school what they are going to do and that just makes things even harder on me. Well please give me some feed back

 

Comments

[Janet]

This is a very interesting question and one that came up just the other day at my school.

On a related issue, a lot of students in my school are being placed in "sheltered English" classes because their English is so poor. However if you talk to them in Spanish, their language is STILL poor. So then is it really a language barrier, or is it something else?

On the other hand, I feel more and more people are getting classified these days. Are we getting better at identifying problems, or are we merely over classifying?

Thanks for stopping by my place. Swing by anytime!:)

[John Lloyd]

Good question, Liz. I saw the stories about the LEAs in the northeast (MA?) where this matter seems to be hot; I left them alone, in part because they are complex. Stilll...to your question of "how many should there be?": I dunno.

It would be good to review the legislative history of IDEA, as I think this was a topic raised during the passage of the original US legislation (PL 94-142). As I recall, experts speculated that the percentage of children that schools could expect to serve would be ≈12%, with ≈2% of these being students with LD. Of course, the percentages of LD have exceeded that prediction, but the overall percentage, nationally, is still below the predicted 12% (11.18% of 6-17 year olds; see Annual Reports to Congress).

A statistical way to examine the question would be to accept the observed mean as the best overall guess and note that any states within a given range of that (±1 standard deviation)—9.97 to 13.30— were "normal." AZ, CA, CO, ID, & NA have identification levels beyond -1 SD low; DC, ME, NJ, SC, and WV have identification levels more than +1 SD higher than the mean.

Of course, that statistical approach has it's problems (e.g., is the observed average truly "normal?"), so it wouldn't provide the final word. How about an alternative approach?

The problem with identification of disability mostly occurs in the LD and SED areas. It's hard to tell, some folks say, whether children identified in those areas have disabilities or are just suffering from dysteachia. So, provide optimal instruction and services in general education and see how many students still qualify. I have no doubt that there would still be many children with substantial reading problems; check the data from O'Connor, Torgesen, and others who have found that even under optimal, research-funded conditions, at least 2% (perhaps 4%) of children continue to struggle with decoding. Furthermore, the identification rates for Emotional Disturbance continue to run far below scientific data examining prevalence of those problems.

Given the foregoing, it should be clear that I don't think there is a firm numerical or arithmetic answer to the question about how many students should receive special education. But, from a different perspective, I can say that I (personally) believe that every child who has a disability should receive special education and that no child has a disability should be excluded from receiving special education. I am fearful that much of the bashing of special education —it's a bad thing; people should avoid it; etc.—will lead to too many errors in the latter direction, too many false negatives.

[liz]

thanks for the thoughtful and educated reply, John.

"Special Education" is such a confusing concept, covering as everything from kids who are three standard deviations above the mean in IQ, with specific learning disabilities, to kids two SD below the mean with other issues, to EBD, to kids with perceptual deficits, to .....

The thing that concerned me is this quote from the Nevada paper

Marva Cleven, coordinator for special services and early childhood education for the Churchill County School District, recently told school board trustees the number of special education students is down 47 from the 2004 count.

"Last year we found 75 students who were no longer eligible for special education services. We did an audit and found they did not belong in special education," Cleven said.

The number of referrals for testing also dropped. Cleven said last year the district received referrals to test 121 students. This year the figure decreased to 66.

She attributed part of the decline to an intervention team that seeks other ways to help a student before labeling that child as disabled.

"Teachers are learning how to implement interventions and focus on strategies," said Cleven.

For the kids' sake, I hope Cleven is correct--that the referrals dropped by 50% because Churchill teachers have gained skills. But I'm skeptical of that much change in one year.