Opinion: 4 Common Sense Proposals to Special Education Reform

Occasionally, we will link to media opinions on aspects of adoption and child welfare that you may never have thought about. This opinion piece discusses fixing the implementation of Individuals with Disabilities Improvement Act (IDEA) and No Child Left Behind.

4 Common-Sense Proposals for Special Education Reform [The Atlantic 4/27/12 by Miriam Kurtzig Freedman] suggests

“The question is, what to do? At the very least, schools and parents should have more flexibility to work together collaboratively in the spirit of the 1975 law. Here are four common-sense proposals:

• Focus on improving regular education for all students. The better that regular education is, the fewer students need to be identified for special education services. When developing inclusive programs, schools should base them on effective teaching practices that improve educational outcomes for both students with disabilities and regular education students. As part of this mission, align IDEA and NCLB to end confusion.

• For the 70 to 80 percent of students discussed above, work to end the “medical model” in which IDEA eligibility for services requires a specialist’s diagnosis. This model is costly, problematic, and inexact. It often kicks in too late, after previously undiagnosed students have struggled and failed. The far better solution is to provide timely and appropriate education services for all students in our schools, based on their current performance, without the need for a diagnosis or label.

 

• End the compliance-based approach to special education. Parents and teachers alike should be liberated from endless form-filling and meetings. Compliance does not improve student results. Only time on task — in classrooms — does.

 

• End the adversarial approach of “private enforcement” by parents and use other dispute resolution models, such as via mediators and ombudsmen or federal and state enforcement mechanisms that encourage trust-building and collaboration between schools and parents.

 

It’s past time to end special education as we know it and develop an outcomes-based model.”

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