IDEA Rapid Response Network (RRN)
News Briefing #12
July 8, 2002
PRESIDENT’S COMMISSION ON EXCELLENCE IN SPECIAL EDUCATION
FINAL REPORT: The report has been made available to members of the House and Senate Committees that are considering IDEA. Here is information from the executive summary. Note that ISSUES are marked in all caps, but we are still only going on the summary. When we have the full report and listen to the House and Senate hearings, we will send out an analysis of the report.
MAJOR FINDINGS:
1. Currently, process takes precedence over results and bureaucratic compliance over student achievement.
2. The current system uses an antiquated model that waits for a child to fail rather than using a model based on prevention and intervention.
3. Educators and policy-makers think about general education and special education as two separate systems and tally the cost of special education as a separate program, not as additional services with resultant add-on expense.
4. When a child fails to make progress, parents have inadequate options and little recourse.
5. A culture of compliance has developed from the pressures of litigation.
6. Current identification methods lack validity, hence many students are misidentified, not identified, or not identified early enough.
7. Teachers need and want better preparation, support, and professional development.
8. Special education research needs enhanced rigor and long-term coordination.
9. The current system fails many children with disabilities; too few graduate from high school or transition to full employment or post-secondary opportunities, despite the transition service provisions in the current IDEA.
MAJOR RECOMMENDATIONS: OVERALL: The central themes of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) must become the driving force behind IDEA reauthorization. This includes a focus on high academic standards, accountability, results, yearly progress reports, parental empowerment, teacher quality, scientifically rigorous research, and better identification and assessment methods. THREE MAJOR RECOMMENDATIONS:
1. Focus on results-not on process. Raise expectations for student results instead of driving the system with process, litigation, regulation, and confrontation.
2. Embrace a model of prevention not a model of failure. Move toward early identification and sift intervention with scientifically based instruction and teaching methods.
3. Consider children with disabilities as general education children first. Share responsibility for students with disabilities. Do not treat special education as a separate cost system. Do not use funding arrangements to create incentives for special education identification or for isolating children with learning and behavior disabilities. Do not relegate students with disabilities to a separately funded program.
SPECIFIC RECOMMENDATIONS:
Accountability, Flexibility, and Parental Involvement:
1. Set high expectations. Use measures such as graduation rates, post-graduation outcomes, and parent satisfaction surveys. ISSUE: NCLB refers to state reading and mathematics assessments; does this recommendation mean that special education students are to be excluded from such assessments, with these other markers to be used as an alternative and separate accountability system?
2. Hold local educational agencies (LEAs) accountable for results. Require states to report annually on the success of each school and LEA in achieving IDEA goals. IDEA should provide for technical assistance for failing LEAs and should require states to take corrective actions, including state direction of IDEA funds for LEAs that do not make adequate yearly progress for three years in a row.
3. Increase parental empowerment and school choice. IDEA should allow state use of federal special education funds to enable students with disabilities to attend schools or to access services of their family’s choosing, provided states measure and report outcomes for all students benefiting from IDEA funds. ISSUE: This appears to be tied to voucher ideas of school choice. How are private schools to be held accountable for outcomes for students with disabilities?
4. Prevent disputes and improve dispute resolution. Develop processes to avoid conflict and promote IEP agreements, such as using IEP facilitators. Require states to make mediation available whenever it is requested, not just when a hearing has been requested. Permit binding arbitration and train mediators, arbitrators, and hearing officers. ISSUE: Many witnesses proposed making mediation mandatory prior to a due process hearing request. This recommendation does not go that far.
Special Education Finance:
1. Increase discretionary Part B federal funding and establish a definable threshold percent of excess costs. Continue the trend of increased federal funding for special education up to a specified threshold expressed as a percent of the estimated “excess cost” of special education borne by local education agencies. ISSUE: This recommendation does not propose full funding. In Senator Kennedy’s introduction tot he executive summary of the Commission report, he registers concern that “the Commission did not take a stand on the commitment made by the Federal government thirty years ago to fully fund special education,” resulting in many students, teachers, parents, and schools continuing to be “cheated out of the resources they were promised.”
2. Link future funding increases above the threshold percent to state plans to improve accountability for results. Cost accountability is fundamental to program accountability. Funding should be increased above the threshold percent only if the state has submitted a state improvement plan consistent with NCLB for implementing anew accountability system.
3. Target Funds for direct services. Ninety percent of Part B funds should flow through to LEAs. Remaining PartB funds should be prioritized consistent with a set of national priorities and retained at the state level.
4. Funding should be increased for Part C and Section 619.
5. Increase state and local flexibility. Year-end unexpended LEA federal funds and a fixed percent of Part B flow-through funds should be used to establish and maintain risk management pools to serve high-cost students such as those who have significant disabilities.
6. Focus on high-need children. Use safety net funding to address the impact of students with significant disabilities on state and local districts.
Federal Regulations and Monitoring, Paperwork Reduction and Increased Flexibility
1. Replace federal monitoring practices with a focused approach. The US DOE should radically alter how it conducts technical assistance and monitoring to focus on results instead of process.
2. Reduce regulatory burden and increase flexibility. IDEA should provide a unified system of services from birth through 21, and the IEP should be simplified to focus on substantive outcomes. Federal regulatory requirements are burdensome and should be simplified. Up to 10states shall be allowed to propose paperwork reduction strategies under IDEA to the Secretary of Education.
3. Utilize federal special education staff more effectively. The Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) has not met its obligations or appropriately implemented its responsibilities. Within 3 months of this report, the Secretary of Education should provide Congress with recommendations for how OSERS can better utilize its staff and resources to implement federal special education law.
4. Expedited results from expedited implementation. The new IDEA authorization should be implemented within 12 months, consistent with NCLB.
Assessment and Identification:
1. Identify and intervene early. Implement research-based early identification and intervention programs to identify academic and behavioral problems in young children.
2. Simplify the identification process. Make eligibility determination simpler and clarify the criteria used to determine the existence of a disability, particularly high-incidence disorder. ISSUE: Is this an attempt to look at the increases in students identified with specific learning disabilities?
3. Incorporate response to intervention. Develop models based on response to intervention for progress monitoring.
4. Incorporate universal design in accountability tools. Include any accommodations and modifications for students with disabilities in designing new assessment tools.
Special Education Research and Dissemination of Information
1. Change the current grant review process to create scientific rigor. Improve the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) so that more researchers participate in review processes. Create a culture of scientific rigor in OSEP.
2. Improve the coordination of special education research. Integrate the activities within the U.S. Department of Education’s OSERS: the Rehabilitation Services Administration, the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, and OSEP.
3. Support long-term research priorities. Focus research on a narrower range of priorities to promote more reliable discoveries.
4. Improve the impact of research findings. Focus on proven, effective practices that can be implemented, scaled, and sustained nationwide.
Post-Secondary Results for Students with Disabilities and Effective Transition Services
1. Simplify federal transition requirements in the IDEA. Provide clear steps for integrating school and non-school transition services.
2. Mandate federal interagency coordination of resources. Provide an Executive Order mandating existing agency coordination and pooling of existing funds.
3. Create a Rehabilitation Act Reauthorization Advisory Committee.
4. Support higher education faculty, administrators, and auxiliary service providers to more effectively provide and help students with disabilities to complete a high quality post-secondary education. Support and hold post-secondary institutions accountable for using evidence-based, best practice programs and practices.
Teacher and Administrator Preparation, Training and Retention
1. Recruit and train highly qualified general and special education teachers. State licensures and endorsements should require specific training related to meeting the needs of students with disabilities and integrating parents into special education services.
2. Create research- and data-driven systems for training teachers of special education.
3. Institute ongoing field experiences. Require teacher trainees to complete supervised practicum experiences in each year of their training, covering the full range of general education, special education, and inclusive settings and service delivery models.
4. Require rigorous training in reading. Include phonemic awareness, decoding, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.
5. Require public reporting. Report the performance of general education and special education program graduates relative to educating students with disabilities.
6. Increase special education and related services faculty. Address the shortage of special education and related services doctorate holders who are qualified to train teachers.
7. Conduct research. Identify the critical factors in personnel preparation for improving thelearning and achievement of students with disabilities.
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