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What is an exceptional children?
1) Children who differ from the norm and require an individualized program of special education and related services.
2) Children who are an exception from the average, both above and below
3) Gifted and talented students
4) Not just kids with disabilities
What is the definition of impairment?
1) A loss or reduced function of a particular body part or organ
2) Something that is physically wrong
3) People with an impairment have a disability
What does disability refer to?
Exists when impairment limits the ability to perform certain tasks.
Define handicap.
1) Problem/disadvantage from a disability encountered when interacting with environment
2) Situation or environment specific
3) Can go away- can have it in one place and not another
What is 'person-first language'?
A way of speaking that puts the person before the disability, such as saying 'a child with autism'.
What offensive terms should we avoid, and what should we use instead?
-high or low functioning, mental retardation, emotionally disturbed
- use intellectual disability (ID) or cognitive impairment (CI)), and emotionally impaired
What are the four elements of special education?
1) Individually planned,
2) intensive,
3) goal-directed,
4) specialized instruction and intervention
What else must you have to make sure you are providing special education effectively and ethically?
1) Research/evidence based methods
2) Guided by student performance
What percent of school-age children receive special education services?
13% of the school-aged population.
What are 3 general trends seen in school disabilities, and what are some of the things contributing to these trends?
1) Twice as many males than females qualify for special education
a) Visibility, societal expectations, genetics, boys develop language slower
2) The number of students receiving special education is continuously growing
a) Less stigma, changing and broadening definitions, better and earlier diagnosis
3) The number of students with ASD is 10x higher than 10 years ago
a) Public awareness, male > female, broadening definitions, better and earlier diagnosis
List the 3 biggest disabilities categories in order and the percentages they take up.
- Most common is Specific Learning Disabilities. Makes up nearly 40% of students who have a disability.
-Speech and Language Impairments is in second place with 16%.
-The third largest category is Other Health Impairments or OHI which makes up 16%. Includes children with ADHD.
What are some benefits of labeling/classifying students with disabilities?
-Accurate data
-helpful for determining needed services
-recognizes meaningful differences
-provides access to accommodations
-and improves visibility to policymakers.
List some disadvantages of labeling/classifying students with disabilities.
-May ignore child's strengths
-cause stigma and peer rejection
-lead to inaccurate expectations
-and negatively affect self-esteem.
-Takes up a lot of time and money
Describe Special Education in the early 1900’s
-basically nonexistent
-no legal requirements
-taking students away from their families and putting them in separate residential facilities
Describe Special Education in the 1920’s-1950’s
-allowed but not popular
-segregation
-special ed. pretty much nonexistent
Describe Special Education in the 1950’s-1960’s
-parents of students with disabilities becoming much more vocal, arguing for change
-researchers become interested
- Civil rights movement, Brown vs. Board of Education, made any type of segregation in schools illegal 1954
Describe Special Education in the 1970’s
-In 1975 the first special ed law passed- Education for All Handicap Children Act (EAHCA);
-federal law that said all public schools have to provide special ed services
What is the significance of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EAHCA) passed in 1975?
-It was the first law requiring all public schools to provide special education services.
-foundational law
What did EAHCA change to in 1990?
In 1990 the law became Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)
What act was passed in 2001 that later changed in 2015?
-No Child Left Behind (NCLB)
- Changed to the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2015
What two aspects did we keep from the NCLB that are used for both special ed and general ed children?
-Standardized Testing
-Checking for progress
What are IDEA/IDEIA’s requirements?
-Zero reject
-free and appropriate public education (FAPE)
-nondiscriminatory evaluation
-IEPs
-least restrictive environment
What are some safe guards IDEA/IDEIA’s put in place?
-parental consent
-confidentiality
-timelines
-paperwork
-due process hearing (incase the parent does not like it)
Define Zero Reject in special education.
-Schools must educate all students with disabilities.
-Child find: each state is responsible for locating, identifying, and evaluating all children who are suspected of having a disability
- Schools and pediatricians monitor
What does FAPE stand for and require?
-Free and Appropriate Public Education.
- All children, regardless of disability are entitled to a free education
- IEP must be developed that implements interventions/strategies that are “based on peer-reviewed research to the extent possible”
- Related services must be provided if the student needs them to attend school, and schools are financially liable for anything they cant provide to ensure access to an education that meets their individual needs.
Describe Nondiscriminatory evaluation
- Schools must use a non-biased, multi-methods form of evaluation
- Tests cannot discriminate
- Tests must be given in the child’s native language or mode of communication
Describe Disproportionate representation
- Exists when a group receives special education at a rate significantly higher or lower than would be expected based on the proportion of the general student population
Describe the “at risk ratio”
- A risk ratio is the relative likelihood of a member of a given group to be receiving special education, compared to members of the general population
- A risk ratio of 1.0 means that the number of students identified with a given disability matches the proportion of the overall student population represented
- A risk ratio greater than 1.0 indicates overrepresentation; a risk ratio less than 1.0 indicates underrepresentation
Describe the representation statuses in “Disproportionate representation”
- Overrepresented: Native American, African American, Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander
- Underrepresented: Asian American
- Hispanic and white students are generally represented among the special education population at an overall rate closer to their proportion of the resident school-age population
What 3 areas have educators identified as integral to this problem
1) Cultural differences between teachers, students, and families, which may lead to biased
referrals
2) Inaccurate assessment of students from some cultural or linguistic backgrounds
3) Lack of culturally responsive curriculum and instructional practices
What age range does school IEP serve?
IEP for students with disability- ages 3-21
An IEP team must include what members?
- Parents (or legal guardian)
- General education teacher
- Special education teacher
- District representative (often an administrator)
- An individual who can interpret evaluation results (school psychologist or school counselor)
- Others at the discretion of the parent or school
- The child with a disability whenever appropriate
What must an IEP include?
- Present level of performance
- Measurable annual goals
- How progress will be measured
- Services needed
- Level of participation in regular education (LRE)
- Accommodations for statewide assessments
- Date services will begin and length of services
- Transition supports (age 16 & up)
How long are IEP’s valid and how frequently must assessments be done to see if the child still qualifies for special ed?
- IEP lasts 1 year
-assessments are done every 3 years
Describe Least restrictive environment/Inclusive education
- Students must be educated with children without disabilities to the maximum extent appropriate
- Must participate in the general education curriculum (not just lunch and recess)
- Spectrum or continuum of services and placements: a range of placement and service options
- The LRE is the setting that is most similar to a regular classroom and that meets the child’s special educational needs
What three dimensions of school life should the IEP teams consider the extent to which the student can effectively be included into?
- The general curriculum
- Extracurricular activities
- Other school activities (recess, lunchtime)
What does IDEA allow IEP teams to determine?
- IDEA allows IEP teams to determine if total integration is appropriate in one dimension and partial integration is appropriate in another dimension
Describe NCLB
- General education law; applies to all students
- Focuses on standardized test scores to see which students are falling behind
- Big problem: focused so much on test scores that teachers felt very pressured, and resulted in some teachers changing their students’ scores
- Reauthorized in 2015; became the Every Student Succeeds Act
Describe ESSA
- Just signed into law December 2015
- Updated and revised version of NCLB
- Changed the way funding was handed out
- Still includes provisions for accountability for student learning (standardized testing)
- Must include students with disabilities
- Continued emphasis on Research/Evidence-based practices
Describe the Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973
- Extends civil rights to children and adults with disabilities in education, employment, and various other settings
- States that “no otherwise qualified handicapped individual shall… solely by reason of their handicap, be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subject to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance”
- No person with disabilities may be excluded from a program because of the lack of an appropriate aid
- Does not provide any federal money to assist people with disabilities
- Architectural accessibility for students, teachers, and others with physical and sensory impairments is an important feature of Section 504
What is the Current model of service delivery?
-Pre-referral → referral → evaluation → label or not? → IEP and placement →monitor, update, reevaluate
Describe Pre-referral
- Early intervention assistance/student success team
- Helps teachers devise and implement interventions for students who are experiencing academic or behavioral difficulties in the regular classroom
- Evidence-based interventions and progress monitoring
- Response to intervention
- Student can come to the school’s attention through the results of a screening test that suggests a possible disability
Describe Referral
- Someone has made a decision to have a child tested for a disability
Describe Evaluation
- Multidisciplinary evaluation team (MET): people with different expertise such as social workers, speech language pathologists, occupational or physical therapists
- Nondiscriminatory and multi-factored evaluation (testing and other data collection)
- Must have parental consent to test their child
Describe Label or not?
- Does this child have a label? If so, what disability?
- Does the child require special education?
Describe IEP & Placement
- Individualized evaluation program team
- Annual goals, special education services, related services, least restrictive environment, accommodations, etc.
- IEP team determines the what, how, who, and when of a child’s special education program
Describe Monitor, Update, Reevaluate
- IEP must be updated each year
- Evaluation must be updated at least one every 3 years
- Ongoing progress monitoring; direct and frequent measurement of student performance
Describe Accommodations
- An adjustment to how a student with a disability is taught or tested
- May include changes to the physical environment, instructional materials, teaching methods, or testing to help students with disabilities learn
- Accommodations do not change what a student is taught or expected to know
- Some students with mild to moderate disabilities are provided with accommodations (additional time, large print) when taking district- and statewide tests
- Students with severe disabilities for whom standard academic achievement tests would be inappropriate can take alternate assessments if their IEP team recommends them
Why is school more effective when parents/families are involved?
- More learning opportunities at home
- Creates a unified front and stability for students- consistency
- Parents are experts on their children- sharing of information
- Student is held accountable
Describe the adjustment process for parents
Includes feelings of:
- Shock, denial, and disbelief
- Anger, guilt, depression, shame, lowered self-esteem, rejection of the child, and overprotectiveness
- Acceptance, adaptation, and appreciation
Describe the principles of effective communication
- Accept parents’ statements;
- respect parents’ point of view
- Listen actively;
-respond to parents with interest and animation
- Question effectively;
-speak plainly and use open-ended questions
- Encourage;
-describe and show parents their child’s improving performance
- Stay focused;
-focus on the child’s educational program and progress
What are some suggestions for working with culturally diverse families?
- Have native speakers for contacting parents
- Have trained interpreters at meetings
- Conduct meetings in family-friendly settings
- Identify and defer to key decision makers in the family
- Recognize and respect diversity
- Make it easy for parents
- Work toward cultural reciprocity
Describe RTI/MTSS (understand the model including all 3 tiers)
- RTI: response to intervention
- MTSS: multi-tiered systems of support
- Tiers refer to how much support a child is receiving
- Tiers don’t have specific locations or places
- Pre-referral step of the current model of service delivery
Describe Tier 1.
Tier 1: Primary/Universal Prevention
- 80% of students
- Core instruction
- All students
- Preventative
Describe Tier 2.
Tier 2: Secondary/Targeted Prevention
- 15% of students
- Supplemental
- Some students
- Reduce risk
- Small group format
Describe Tier 3.
Tier 3: Tertiary/Intensive Intervention
- 5% of students
- Individualized, highly specific
Research, what is the gold standard?
- Within all 3 tiers, we want to use research-based or evidence-based methods and interventions
- Positive reinforcement, self-monitoring, repeated reading intervention
- Heavy emphasis on Randomized Control Trials (RCTs) The gold standard of research design!!
Research, What is RCT?
- Random selection of participants
- Random assignment to control vs. experimental group
- Control group receives what is standard
- Usually large studies
- Blind or double-blind
- Not a common research design in schools
Research, why is special education research hard?
- Recreating the same study in a different scenario
- Doing large scale studies is almost impossible- specific subset of population
- 12 different disability categories in special education and different identifiable conditions within each one
- Control groups are nearly impossible in a school-based study
- Parental consent: parents won’t agree for their child to join a study if their student isn’t going to be in the experimental group
- Low prevalence of certain disorders
- Non-treatment groups are usually not possible (for ethical reasons)
- Researchers can’t control setting-usually done in labs, but these done in school context
Research, why we can’t always do gold standard research?
There are not enough students in special education that would be needed to conduct an RCT test, also other factors such as having control groups are difficult considering school hours and also we are dealing with minors so getting constant parental consent is difficult.
What does the MET (multi-disciplinary evaluation team) do?
- MET team is comprised of people with different expertise such as social workers, speech language pathologists, occupational or physical therapists, and more
what is included in a multi-factored evaluation?
- RIOT:
- Record reviews
- Interviews (with parents, teachers, student)
- Observations
- Testing (standardized testing and checklist)
Eligibility for special education services & how it is different from DSM-diagnosis
- Teacher/parent/team requests an evaluation
- Must have parental consent
- Then, multi-factored assessment done by Multidisciplinary Evaluation Team (MET). this
typically includes
- Record reviews
- Interviews with teachers, parents, and student
- Classroom observations
- Standardized tests and checklists
- Evaluation report/meeting-team reviews testing and assessment information
- Test at least once every 3 years and no more than 1 time a year
-DSM diagnosis is made by a medical professional (psychiatrist) it gives a child a label but eligibility for special ed
What does it mean that a test is standardized?
- Training and administration done
- Norms and scoring
- Technically adequate
- Reliability: ability of a test to produce consistent results
- Validity: ability of a test to measure what it intends to measure
- Only individuals who have been formally trained can administer these tests
- Examiner must follow the standardized protocol (exact wording, exact timing, etc) or the
results are invalid
- Majority of the scores fall between 85 and 115
- Normative sample done
- Issues that may affect reliability: test development, test-giver, test-taker
4 areas of testing- what each measures, and who (which disability categories)
-Intelligence testing
-achievement testing
-adaptive behavior testing
-Behavioral (problem testing)
Describe Intelligence testing
- Intelligence is one’s general ability, global capacity to think rationally, act purposefully, and deal effectively with the environment, and memory, processing speed, verbal skills
- Intelligence testing focuses on cognitive impairment, specific learning disabilities,traumatic brain injuries, and asd
Describe Achievement testing
- Dependent on formal learning
- Tests reading and math inventories
- For younger children, tests measure knowledge of colors, letters, shapes, etc.
- Wider range of scores- students can change their scores over time
- Achievement testing focuses on specific learning disabilities, as well as all other disabilities and impairments
Describe Adaptive behavior testing
- Evaluates how well a child is adapting and functioning compared to other children of the same age
- Language development, domestic activities, vocational activities, economic activities, physical development, independent functioning, self-direction, socialization
- Activities with child, as well as questioning of parents and teachers
- Adaptive behavior testing focuses on cognitive impairment, as well as ASD
Describe Behavioral (problem) testing
- Best way to collect data on problem behaviors is through direct observation
- Interviews with parents or teachers
- Standardized behavioral tests: dimensional rating scales
- Checklists for multiple behavioral concerns
- Checklists for behavioral concerns
- Behavioral testing focuses on emotional impairment, as well as ASD, traumatic brain injury, cognitive impairment, other health impairments
Describe the Importance of early intervention
- The earlier intervention begins the better
- Early intervention: a comprehensive system of therapies, educational, nutritional, child care, and family supports, all designed to reduce the effects of disabilities or prevent the occurrence of learning and developmental problems
- Research evidence shows that comprehensive, experimentally based early intervention enhances the development of young children who exhibit delays and helps at-risk children
Describe EAHCA (The Education of the Handicapped Act) Amendments of 1986
- Extended requirement for free, appropriate education to 3-5 year olds with disabilities
- Offers incentives for states to provide services for children with disabilities or who are “at-risk” ages birth-2 years
- Michigan program: Early on
What are Risk factors
In Michigan, “at-risk” means 4+ of the following:
- Atypical development or parent child interaction
- Parent has chronic mental illness or cognitive impairment
- Parent has a drug or alcohol problem
- Parent with history of loss or abuse
- Family medical or genetic history
- Previous death due to SIDS
- Isolation of family
- Parent with chronic illness
- Acute family crisis
- Parent child separation- incarceration, hospitalization, divorce
- Teen mother
- Parent has 4+ preschool age children
- Poverty
- Parent has less than a 9th grade education, unemployment, single parent
- Lack of stable residence
- No health care/insurance
- No prenatal care
- Prenatal substance abuse
- Problems during pregnancy/childbirth
- Asphyxia during childbirth
- Low birthweight
- Small-for-age baby
- Extreme irritability in infant
- Repeated accidents
- Chronic ear infections
Describe Research on early intervention (for 4 studies we discussed in class)
Generally, research focuses in 2 areas:
1) First generation research
a) Does early intervention make a difference?
2) Second generation research
a) What factors make early intervention more or less effective for particular children
IFSP (Individual Family Service Plan) services
Individual Family Service Plan (IFSP)
- 0-3 year olds are served through an IFSP
Includes:
- Level of development in all areas
- Family’s resources, priorities, and needs
- Measurable outcomes
- Statement of measurable results or outcomes expected to be achieved for the infant or toddler and the family
- Early intervention services and environments
- Steps to preschool transition
Individualized Education Plan (IEP)
Preschool IEP:
- Eligibility category: often early childhood developmental delay (ECDD), 6% of special ed population
- More suggestions/info for parents
- Home-based, center-based or combined options
- No requirements on length of school day
School-age IEP:
- All types of eligibility categories
- More suggestions/info for teachers
- School-based
- Requirements for length of school day
Advantages of home-based programming
Advantages
- The student receives undivided attention and care in their most familiar environment
- Other family members are given more opportunities to interact with the student during instruction
- It is more likely for the activities being used to be individualized and well-suited for the student
- Parents and guardians feel involved and active in their child’s education
- Helps to avoid feelings of guilt and anger
- More cost efficient
Disadvantages of home-based programming
Disadvantages
- Not all families are able to allocate so much time to their child throughout the day
- Not all family members make good or efficient teachers
- Students in home-based programs may not receive as wide of a range of services as they might be exposed to in a center-based program
- The student does not receive as many options for socialization
Advantages of center-based programming
Advantages
- A team of specialists from different fields can directly observe each child
- The opportunity to integrate and to interact with other typically developing peers
- Parents can feel more support by working with professionals and other parents at the center
Disadvantages of center-based programming
Disadvantages
- Expense for transportation
- The cost and maintenance of the center itself
- Possibly less parent involvement than a home-based center
- Depending on the center/school, there may be a lack of integration with typically developing students which can make the transition to general education challenging
