Healthy Again - but Not at School

I actually feel pretty good today. Whatever my doctor gave me Monday, my sinuses are mostly cleared up and I can actually go to sleep with my mouth closed (which is nice).

I'm hope today, anyway. So is everyone else. We have about four inches of snow at my house this morning. Tazewell County closed last night; McDowell County (along with the rest of West Virginia) closed this morning. We went to bed knowing we had a two hour delay and then got the call at about 6am this morning saying we were closed.

Friday I went to the Board offices for a training session. We have a new IEP form and, more importantly, new requirements within the document. The meeting took about tow and a half hours. I'll spend part of today looking through the new material and browsing the new form.

Every year in March and April we have annual reviews on each special education student and create their individualized education plan (IEP) for next year. I have nine special education students at the moment to think about. Two are leaving the elementary school for the middle school this year, so I don't have to actually write their whole IEP; but I do still have to write their PLEPs (present level or education performance) and send those on to the middle school.

We're also implementing a new program to help struggling readers as part of the response to intervention framework at our school. It's called Recipe for Reading. It falls within the pale of the Orton-Gillingham approached and our county got the institute for Multi-Sensory Education to come in at the end of last year and train us in how to use it.

I'll probably spend part of today looking back over those materials. Our two reading specialists started using it with a few students each on Monday. And I've got a couple of students to start it with, too; but I was out sick...

We'll see whether I get to teach tomorrow. At the moment the weather forecast makes it look quite feasible that we could all be home again for another day.

The Future of IQ Testing in Identifying Learning Disabilities

Note: Visit my education blog, The Green Cup.

The usefulness of IQ testing for identifying learning disabilities is hotly debated. And with changes in the law, issues like cost and ethics are also being discussed.

When reading specialists meet with small groups of students under the new Response to Intervention model, they collect information about how the student responds to instructional strategies and approaches aimed at helping those students "get" what they're having problems with in their regular class. Later, if and when a child's academic problems become serious enough that the child is suspected of having a learning disability, a team of professionals looks at the notes and reports the reading specialist made during those small group times.

Is that it? Is that all there is now to deciding whether a child has a learning disability?

James B Hale, Ph.D. thinks that it is pretty obvious from the new regulations on IDEA 2004 that something beyond just data from the different interventions that get tried with a child will be required.

"So, if you adopt an RTI-only perspective, what multiple measures will be used? How will practitioners assess all areas of suspected disability, including language (i.e., "communicative), motor, cognitive, and intellectual function? ...Maybe I'm wrong, but I think if people are making classification decisions solely on the basis of RTI data, they are now OUT OF COMPLIANCE with the law. RTI data can be *part* of a comprehensive evaluation (as it should be), but it is NOT a SUBSTITUTE for a comprehensive evaluation," Hale said as part of a discussion of the issue on a National Association of School Psychologists listserv.

Dr. Hale is a certified school psychologist and special education teacher who now teaches as part of the graduate program in school psychology at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine.

The preamble to the new regulations clears up some of the discussion: "The Department (of Education) does not believe that an assessment of psychological or cognitive processing should be required in determining whether a child has an SLD. There is no current evidence that such assessments are necessary or sufficient for identifying SLD...In many cases, though, assessments of cognitive processes simply add to the testing burden and do not contribute to interventions." (p 649). With some 1244 pages of preamble to be waded through, there's probably a lot left to be discovered in the new regs.

In email communication, Guy M. McBride, Ph.D., pointed out that there is a major difference between saying, on the one hand, that we must still perform IQ tests on kids suspected of having a learning disability because the law still (the argument goes) requires it and, on the other hand, saying that we should be performing those tests because they provide us with important information. If the IQ test is no longer a hard and fast requirement, school systems could save money by not testing for IQ - maybe a lot of money when you consider that tests for one child can cost as much as $8,000.

"Depending on the criteria adopted by their states ...public agencies could realize savings under the final regulations by reducing the amount of a school psychologist's time involved in conducting cognitive assessments that would have been needed to document an IQ discrepancy," said McBride. McBride is a school psychologist in North Carolina with over three decades of experience.

Can we use IQ tests to help decide whether a child has a learning disability? If the team evaluating the child thinks that would be useful, certainly. Do we have to use IQ tests anymore? It seems pretty clear from the preamble of the regs that IQ testing is not a legal requirement under IDEA 2004. But §300.304 (Evaluation procedures) of the regs says that "(c)Each public agency must ensure that-- (6) In evaluating each child with a disability under §§300.304 through 300.306, the evaluation is sufficiently comprehensive to identify all of the child's special education and related services needs..."

For school administrators the question becomes one of what it means to be "sufficiently comprehensive" without actually administering the WISC-III (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children) or some similar test. And some on the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) listserv are arguing that the issue is not just legal, but ethical - that it is perhaps impossible to be "sufficiently comprehensive" without a test like the WISC-III, or that it is a disservice to the child being evaluated to not perform such a test.

It will probably be at least a few months before most states announce how they will define "specific learning disability" in light of the new regs - an what role IQ testing will play in the definition...

Response to Intervention, Learning Disabilities, and IQ

Note: Visit my education blog, The Green Cup.

Will we continue testing intelligence? The new Response to Intervention model raises questions about the role of intelligence testing in the future. Do we need it anymore?

School psychologists around the country are among those watching closely as the Response to Intervention model gets implemented. The reason? Intelligence testing has long been controversial and is an expensive component of identifying children for special education services.

"Getting paid for giving IQ tests over the past 35 years has been very, very good to me," said one school psychologist recently in a forum I'll leave nameless. In the context of the larger discussion, to be fair, the remark wasn't as mercenary as it might sound in isolation.

Will we keep giving IQ tests? That question seems to be on the lips of every certified school psychologist, as well as the superintendents who have to pay them and the school principals who have to wait for testing to get done.

Obviously we will continue to give IQ tests when we suspect that a child is mentally impaired. And ruling out mental impairment has been a part of identifying a child as being emotionally disturbed for the last few years; that doesn't look set to change.

IQ tests for learning disabilities? James B. Hale, Ph.D., had this to say after the new regulations were made public: "A quick read over of the regs suggests that after a child does not RTI (respond to intervention), the regs support our position that we should be doing a comprehensive evaluation, including an evaluation of cognitive processes..." Hale is a certified school psychologist and special education teacher who now teaches as part of the graduate program in school psychology at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. Hale's remarks were part of a discussion of the issue on a National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) listserv.

Guy M. McBride, Ph.D., is a school psychologist in North Carolina who disagrees with Hale and said so as part of the NASP discussion. "A school may (not must) include cognitive testing but it is not a requirement...," said McBride. "Those who argue that a comprehensive evaluation should always include cognitive testing... are welcome to make those arguments." But McBride believes that under the new regulations individual school districts will make that decision. He says those districts, "would only be obliged to always administer cognitive tests under the LD category if the agency believed it was always appropriate to do so."

The disagreement is easy to explain: the new regulations are not exactly crystal clear in their meaning. The section entitled Evaluations, Eligibility Determinations, Individualized Education Programs, and Educational Placements begins with §300.300 on page 1429 of the new regulations. In the 24 pages that follow we learn that:

• Parental consent is still required in order to evaluate a child to determine if they are, in the words of the policy, "A child with a disability." That means that normal classroom interventions, like having a child spend half an hour a day for a week in a Tier II session on conjugating irregular verbs might get looked at in the evaluation process, but those sessions don't constitute an evaluation process in and of themselves. It's worth noting that once the school obtains permission to evaluate a child to decide if the child has a disability, there is still a 60-day timeline in place for making the decision.
  
  
• The evaluation process must "Use a variety of assessment tools and strategies to gather relevant functional, developmental, and academic information about the child" and must "Not use any single measure or assessment as the sole criterion for determining whether a child is a child with a disability."
  
  
• Whatever might be involved in deciding that a child is mentally impaired or autistic, there are additional procedures for identifying children with specific learning disabilities. And while each individual state will have to come up with guidelines for determining what constitutes a learning disability in that state, the new regs make it plain that states "Must not require the use of a severe discrepancy between intellectual ability and achievement for determining whether a child has a specific learning disability" (emphasis added) and "Must permit the use of a process based on the child's response to scientific, research-based intervention."

Many educators and observers seem to be operating under the misunderstanding that classroom interventions will be the process for identifying children with learning disabilities - and that we'll never have to give another IQ test when we suspect learning disabilities. Judging from the new regs, they're wrong. But the idea that a formal and complete process of IQ testing will still be required appears dubious, and appears to be left up to individual states.

There's much more to say on the issue. And we'll look more closely at the question soon...

Response to Intervention: the Pros

If your child's IQ is between 76 and 90 (that's between 15% and 20% of all kids) the Response to Intervention model probably brings them help they weren't getting before...

It's called the "dull-average" range - not a very colorful or flattering description. One author calls it the "special education no man's land." If a child's IQ is about 70 or below, they can get help from the special education people at a school by being identified as mentally impaired (though there are a few factors other than IQ that enter in to the decision). If their IQ is about 85 or above and they're not doing well in class, they can possibly get help from the special education people at a school by being identified as having a learning disability.

"About" gets defined a little differently from state to state, but basically it means that educators acknowledge that the tests we use to measure IQ aren't perfect. So "about" equals a five point margin for error.

Strangely, when evaluating a child we suspect of being mentally impaired, "about" means a five point margin of error in favor of identifying the child; we'll agree that a child with an IQ as high as 75 can be considered mentally impaired (the cut off for the mentally impaired placement category was 70) if the other factors are in place. But when we suspect a child of having a learning disability the knife cuts the other way. Evaluators often won't agree than a child with an IQ score of 85 has an IQ of at least 85; the child has to score a 90 on the test before the psychologist will nod their head and agree that the child has an IQ of at least 85 (the cut off for the learning disability placement category). When evaluating a child we suspect of having a learning disability, "about" means a five point margin of error against identifying the child.

No one would ever put it this way to a parent (I hope), but under the discrepancy model that's been in use for the last 25 years or so, if Johnny's IQ is between 76 and 90 he's too bright to be mentally impaired and too "dull" to have a learning disability. Johnny's problem in class (the policy's idea, not mine), is that he's just living up to his potential...

Response to Intervention (RtI) takes a different approach. IQ ceases to be the issue in identifying learning disabilities. And the emphasis on identifying learning disabilities is replaced with a focus on preventing them. RtI is partly a reflection of a greater commitment to the philosophical ideal that all children can learn. When children aren't learning, we intervene to help them. And we assume that the problem is the teaching, not the child, until we can prove otherwise.

"Dull average" Johnny gets help that wasn't available to him before; he gets it in the Tier II level of his school's intervention model. Maybe he gets a lot of help - in short spurts throughout the year. And maybe he even gets identified as having a learning disability, though he wouldn't have before under the discrepancy model (and there is still some confusion over that possibility).

The focus on prevention and intervention instead of on identifying disabilities is a positive change (provided identification isn't ignored or avoided as a possibility). And the fact that children will get help based on educational need instead of disability category or socio-economic status alone is an improvement.

There is another potential benefit to the RtI model: cooperation. There has been a divide, a chasm at times, between reading specialists and special education personnel in a school. Each have different mandates and are funded (at least partly) by separate federal programs. Often the reading specialists simply doesn't work with children that have been placed in special education and the special education personnel at a school only take responsibility for a child's education after the child has been determined to be eligible for IDEA services.

RtI creates a school environment where a special education teacher can sit down with a child that hasn't been "placed" yet and provide instruction as part of a Tier II (or Tier III) intervention; as much as 15% of a school's special education funding can be spent in this intervention setting, working with kids that haven't yet been identified for special education services. And the Title I reading specialist can sit right there with the special education teacher and work with the same kid (regardless of socio-economic status) in the intervention framework.

The synergy that could result from cooperation between those two programs could be a strong positive force in a school. And the possibility exists that learning disabilities people and reading people will work together to successfully address the single most common specific learning disability in the schools today: dyslexia.

Response to Intervention: the Cons

Note: Visit my education blog, The Green Cup.

Can we still measure whether a child has a disability?

We talked last week about the new model for identifying learning disabilities: Response to Intervention.

Who decides if Johnny has a disability? In the past it was mostly math. Parents and educators could point to test results and say a child DID or DIDN'T have a disability.

One of the biggest questions the Response to Intervention (RtI) model will face is a pretty simple one: "What IS response?" The discrepancy model, for all its shortcomings, was quantifiable.

You can hear the psychologist (or whomever) at the eligibility committee meeting: "Susie has this much of a discrepancy between her intelligence and her achievement scores, Ms. Smith, and ...well... that means she not learning disabled..."

But can you hear the school's reading specialist making the explanation instead? "Ms. Smith, we've been giving Susie some extra help during intervention time now for about 15 weeks. I know she doesn't seem to be catching up; but when we move her into a one-to-one setting with a specialist and tailor instruction just for her she responds well enough that, in my professional opinion, she doesn't have a learning disability."

Who does decide if Johnny or Susie has a disability? At the moment it's not completely clear whether interventions (and the response Johnny or Susie has to them) are also evaluations, or part but not all of the evaluation process, or simply part of the pre-referral process. Does the fact that Johnny didn't respond to interventions mean in itself that he has a learning disability, or does it mean he should be evaluated to see if he has a learning disability? And if it means that he should be evaluated, then what constitutes an evaluation? The answers to those questions will probably vary from state to state...

It is clear that RtI is intended to replace the discrepancy model as a way of identifying learning disabilities. And it is clear that states cannot require local school districts to use the discrepancy model. It is not clear when the actual evaluation process starts -- when we stop trying to simply intervene and catch Johnny up in reading, and when we start trying to decide if maybe Johnny has a disability. And the new rules will probably allow more flexibility of differences in practice from state to state and district to district than ever before.

In the past it was mostly mathematical. IDEA (the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, amended in 2004) is first and foremost a civil rights law, guaranteeing the rights of children with disabilities to an education. It relies on the best features of our adversarial court system to ensure that a child's rights aren't denied. And now the only thing that really seems to determine whether a child has a learning disability is the one thing the courts are reluctant to second guess - the professional judgment of educators.

Will it really be a problem? Consider this...

The estimates vary, but somewhere between 50% and 80% of students identified as having a learning disability are dyslexic. Reading is the process of associating a group of mental units we call phonemes with symbols we call letters. Dyslexia is a condition that alters the way sound is processed so that a student with dyslexia doesn't recognize those phonemes the way other students do. What do students with dyslexia do? They cope. They make an effort to associate whole words with the way a group of letters looks to them. Or they employ some other strategy. And they make progress. Some progress. And the more attention and encouragement the child gets, the more progress they make. The problem is, while it is enough progress to hold out hope for those concerned about the child's performance, it is almost never enough progress to catch up. The result? A dyslexic child can appear to be responding (to some extend) to an intervention when in fact we've only slowed the pace at which they are falling behind. And unless their dyslexia has been identified, the chances are that they will hit the same wall in reading (the expansion of vocabulary) that they would have under the discrepancy model - and hit it at the same time (about fourth grade).

Students with dyslexia DO respond to intervention - just not enough to catch up. And the RtI model will then have to decide whether they have a learning disability based on partial response. It is not just an either/or model - though you could get that impression from the simplistic nature of many discussion of the issue.

We've talked around a bigger question. Is dyslexia a disability? The International Dyslexia Association says "yes." I think the solution often has been to ignore the possibility that a child even has dyslexia - despite the fact that there are specific interventions that could be used to teach reading to learners with that disorder.

The success of RtI will be based in part on whether educator in America come to grips with dyslexia - identify it early and address it specifically with interventions designed for dyslexics. If that doesn't happen, my prediction is that RtI will not be a successful approach to learning disabilities any more than the discrepancy model was.

Response to Intervention - A New Model for Identifying Disabilities

Note: Visit my education blog, The Green Cup.

When the regulations for IDEA 2004 became official not long ago, a new model came to town for identifying students as having a specific learning disability. It's called response to intervention, and is abbreviated as RTI or RtI.

To understand RtI and its implications fully you need to understand the previous model for deciding whether or not a child had a learning disability. That model, called the discrepancy model, compares IQ (on something like the WISC-IV) and achievement (usually measured with something like the WIAT) and examines the difference. The idea until now has been that if a child has the intelligence to learn at a particular level but isn't, that discrepancy between intelligence and achievement is evidence of a disability.

The problem was that it takes time, years in fact, for a discrepancy to become significant enough to be considered as a disability. In first grade there's not much to measure. And in second grade there's still not usually a big enough difference between intelligence and achievement to make the discrepancy model work.

When a teacher first suspects that a child may have a learning disability in the first or second grade, everyone felt trapped under the old discrepancy model. The child may well have had a disability, but we needed evidence of the disability in order to place the child in special education. So instead of getting help then, the child got watched more closely. It was kind of like having a rule that you can't throw a life preserver to a kid in the pool until their head goes under the third time. This year the child is just behind, next year the child will have a disability...

In contrast to the old discrepancy model, the RtI model begins looking for curricular intervention designed to catch the kid up as soon as they begin having problems - back in first or second grade. RtI has the potential then to allow disabilities to be identified and defined based on the response a child has to the interventions that are tried. At the very least, RtI can replace the pre-referal process for special education. And in theory, children with real disabilities could be identified and placed years earlier and children without disabilities won't be allowed to fall further and further behind simply to see if they have a learning disability.

The Reading First people have fleshed out the concept of RtI so that most educators today think of a detailed set of specifications when someone mentions RtI. Dallas Reading First has a website that describes the process of intervention well:

• Students get taught good stuff in a setting known as Tier I. This is the primary (or "core") instructional setting for all students.
  
• Sometimes a particular student needs more. So instruction gets supplemented with an "intervention." This is called Tier II. Students come and go in Tier II instruction for short periods of time to address specific areas where the student is falling behind or failing to "get it." Tier II usually involves 30 minutes of extra instruction a day in the content area of intervention. Usually there are no more than four or five students in a Tier II intervention session.
  
• When a student doesn't seem to benefit from 30 extra minutes in Tier II they get moved on up the intervention chart and start getting an extra hour a day (usually) at Tier III. Tier III interventions tend to be more individualized and involve one-on-one time with a specialist.

The Dallas Reading First site describes an intervention plan specifically for reading. And RtI is almost always thought of as a response to reading problems at the moment; but there is no reason the model couldn't be adapted to math or other content areas.

The Dallas Reading First website illustrates almost exactly what former International Reading Association President Richard L. Allington complained about in his article Research and the Three Tier Model in April of 2006. Students in Tier II in Dallas don't get help with what they did during Tier I instruction; instead they get more and different material on reading: they didn't understand McGraw-Hill so they get time in Voyager. But as Allington points out, that's not really a problem with the three tier model itself as much as with the manner in which the model is used.

Will RtI work? I suppose the more salient question becomes who will the RtI model work for? Will it work for the people who think it takes too long under the discrepancy model to identify a child who has a learning disability? Will it work for county administrators and other groups who sometimes feel that too many children are identified as having learning disabilities? And will it work for kids who don't really have a disability but do need help?

I'll take a look at some of the pros and cons of the RtI model in the near future...

Attending Autism Workshops

Note: Visit my education blog, The Green Cup.

I spent today at a workshop on autism. It was the second such workshop in a series of four presented by the West Virginia Autism Training Center at Marshall University. Like most such workshop, this series is not purely informational. It is designed to promote an approach to dealing with autism in the classroom (and other settings). The approach is called Positive Behavior Support.

Autism has been in the news a lot over the past couple of years. A number of controversies surround the disorder - chief among them is the increase in the number of cases of autism being reported. Thirty years ago autism was a relatively rare condition that ordinary people knew little about. Many medical professional either considered it a form of mental retardation or (worse) simply mistook it for mental retardation. Today the most common estimate is that one in every 166 children is born with autism. Since four out of every five cases of autism occur in boy, that means that about one out of ever 415 girls is born with autism and one our of about every 103 boys is born with autism.

Why are there more cases now? That question could start fist fights. On the one hand is the suggestion that, just maybe, the biggest reason is that we've learned to recognize autism better and the second biggest reason is that we've changed who gets to keep the count. Under this theory, we've always had about this many autistic children, we just called them something else - mentally impaired, or learning disabled, or emotionally disturbed. The reported number of cases is also up because before the 1990's doctors, for the most part, reported on the number of autism cases; under the Child Find provisions of Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), schools took over the responsibility of reporting the statistics. And it became an obligation - not just to report cases that showed up, but to go out and find those children and identify them.

The definition of autism has also been altered and expanded along the way. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is the book doctors use to identify autism. The definition in the DSM-III published in 1980 differed from that in DSM-IIIR published in 1987. It was changed again in the DSM-IV(TR) published in 1994.

Other disorders, like Asperger Syndrome, have been grouped together as being related in some way to autism. And when a child doesn't quite meet the definition of autism, professionals will describe the child as falling under the umbrella of "autism spectrum" - disorders that can't be clearly identified but resemble autism.

The workshops have been interesting. The first one was mostly an introduction. among the topics that got floated and discussed: the genetics of autism, the possibility that autism is an evolutionary adaptation (not sure I buy that), the question of whether famous people are autistic (Bill Gates was mentioned), and more.

The workshop today dealt with identifying the causes of problem behavior and how to find solutions for them. Functional Behavior Assessment...

Two more workshops to go.

The Spiral Curriculum

Note: Visit my education blog, The Green Cup.

The concept of a spiral curriculum has changed the way I teach. I suspect that the concept will change the way most teachers teach before too much longer. And special needs students will benefit from that.

A couple of years I was introduced to a concept in teaching that, for me (and most of the other teachers in my building), was almost entirely new. The concept, the idea, is at least as old as I am. It is called a spiral curriculum.

Let me compare a spiral curriculum to the more tradition approach to teaching that people are used to. The basic idea behind the tradition approach is that the time has come for something: fractions, gerunds, state capitals, the Third Law of Thermodynamics - whatever. Because the time has come, we're going to learn it. Maybe that means we're going to memorize it (like with state capitals). Maybe that means we're going to develop a skill with it (like the addition of fractions with like denominators). Maybe that means we're going to grasp how it affects us. But whatever it means, the time is now - for EVERYONE. We're going to work on it for a while. The kids are going to learn it NOW. And then we're going to move on to the next thing that the time has come for...

In contrast, a spiral curriculum begins with the assumption that children are not always ready to learn something. Readiness to learn is at the core of a spiral curriculum. And instead of focusing for relatively long periods of time on some narrow topic whose time has come, a spiral curriculum tries to expose students to a wide varies of ideas over and over ago. For a select few, the time for gerunds and infinitives has already arrived by the second grade. And for a few, algebra and geometry make perfect sense by grade three. A spiral curriculum, by moving in a circular pattern from topic to topic within field like, say, math, seeks to catch kids when they first become ready to learn something and pick up the other kids, the ones not ready to learn yet, later - the next time we spiral around to that topic.

Why isn't a spiral curriculum a circular curriculum? Because it doesn't stay at the same difficult level as time goes by....

And it is with math that I became involved in a spiral curriculum. My school district began this year implementing a curriculum developed at the University of Chicago called Everyday Math. From the very early grades students are introduced to ideas from algebra, geometry, statistics, measurement, patterns, and so on. The challenge for the teacher? Simple: stay on track. The first time you try and explain what a variable is, NO ONE gets it. You spend the day that the book says to on it and you MOVE ON.

And THAT is HARD for someone from a traditional background. Looking at a group of kids and saying, "No one understood. Some of them will get it next time..." is hard for someone from a traditional teaching background. But there will be a next time. And a next time after that. So if Billy or Suzie isn't ready for converting improper fractions to mixed numbers this week, NOW, that's okay.

And for special needs children, that's good news...

The Disconnect: Syndromes, Disorders, and Special Education

Note: Visit my education blog, The Green Cup.

The Disconnect between syndromes, disorders, and conditions on the one hand and placement in Special Education on the other is sometimes hard to explain to parents. This is a look at why...
February 21, 2006 - It is not always easy to explain to a parent why their child with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), or Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, or Dyslexia, etc. is assigned to a particular special education placement and someone else's child with the SAME DISORDER or condition is assigned to a DIFFERENT placement. The explanation becomes even more difficult when the parent's child is denied special education services and someone else they know has a child with the same disorder that IS placed in special education...

Special education law and practice places students in a special education environment based on a variety of factors. While some special education placements are straightforward (a blind child is, after all, blind and a deaf child is deaf - though in either case those may not be their only problems), others are not so clear cut. Special education law places students in particular categories based on educational issues, not as the result of a medical diagnosis. So, for example, in my state (West Virginia) a doctor would generally conclude that a patient with an IQ of 69 was mildly mentally impaired (or retarded). But IQ ALONE is not a sufficient factor to have such a student placed in the special education environment. West Virginia's Regulations for the Education of Exceptional Students (Policy 2419) says that the student must also have "limitations" in two "adaptive skill" areas - areas like the ability to communicate, to care for themselves, to relate well with their peers, or to look out for their own health and safety. Academic performance, their ability to adapt to their academic environment, is one of the areas. The point is that just because your family doctor says that Johnny is mentally impaired from a MEDICAL standpoint, that doesn't AUTOMATICALLY make him mentally impaired from an EDUCATIONAL standpoint.

The situation can get more confusing. Consider some condition that may not affect IQ per se and can vary in severity. The International Dyslexia Association says in its Frequently Asked Questions section that "Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurological in origin..." Well, maybe. Testing would have to determine that -- on a child by child basis. A specific learning disability is defined in most states as a discrepancy between IQ and academic performance. When a student with an average or better IQ doesn't achieve well we change the way he's being taught. Eventually, if that doesn't work, we consider the possibility that he has a learning disability. The learning disability IS (at the moment at least, in most states' policies) the discrepancy between achievement and intelligence (not the dyslexia). And plenty of students with dyslexia end up responding to changes in the way they are taught in the regular education setting before the process reaches the point of placing the student in special education.

ADHD provides an even more complicated set of problems when trying to decide how (and whether) to place a child in special education. ADHD is not always easy for a doctor to diagnose. If it is properly diagnosed and the child is successfully treated for the disorder before it becomes a long term educational problem, the child may never be placed in the special education setting. If it is diagnosed but NOT treated, the child may be placed as Other Health Impaired (OHI). If ADHD is suspected but never diagnosed by a doctor, the student may be placed as having a specific learning disability (LD). Or in those circumstances the student may be placed as having what some states call an emotional disturbance (ED) and other states call a behavior disorder (BD). Why the differences? Because each child is different and the question is not one of what medical condition or disorder the student has. The question is this: How does this particular child's medical problem affect its education.

Parents often find the process confusing. They think their doctor has already told them what their child's problem is. But while the doctor may be right, medically speaking, the consideration at school is not medical. The school has to consider how a medical condition effects the way a child learns. And it has to consider that question one child at a time...

Getting Cut On (And a Few Other Personal Notes)...

I went under the knife today. Dr. E. Khuri removed a lipoma from the left side of my back. The procedure took about 30 minutes. He used a local anesthetic (I think he said it was Xylocaine) mixed with epinephrine to reduce bleeding. It felt like a mild bee sting, then it got warm, then it went away. I could feel pressure as he worked on me, but no real tactile sensation. I left with five stitches and he showed me how the lipoma floated in water and explained how that meant it was mostly fat (and thus benign).

Cheryl drove me to the appointment and waited in the waiting room for me. I'm supposed to wait until Friday before I stand under a shower and get it wet...

I received word yesterday that I passed the three GACE tests I took in October. My understanding now is that all I have to do is submit the paperwork to be fully certified in Georgia in Early Childhood Education (PreK-5), Middle Grades Math, and Special Education for High School Social Studies. I take the early childhood special education test in January.

Seems like weekends are disappearing. This Saturday I have a workshop with all the Title I and Special Ed people in our county to talk about the intervention components of our new reading series. We're supposed to bring an intervention portfolio on every child that's been in intervention along with the schedule of ever teacher at our school. My guess is that the meeting will be somewhat more pleasant than having a boil lanced, but not as much fun as getting a tooth filled. I plan on leaving at 3pm because the Tennessee Volunteers play for the Southeastern Conference title at 4pm.

The following Saturday, December 8, I get to attend the first of four Saturday workshops on autism - a subject I'm very interested in.



Finally, I bought a new coffee pot today. The old one was a good soldier. It's about two years old now, and at two pots a day I figure it brewed about 1400 pots of coffee. It's slowed in its old age and now takes almost 25 minutes to spit a pot out. And that's unacceptable. So out it goes.

Well, I need to go figure out how to use the new pot...

What is ADHD?

Note: Visit my education blog, The Green Cup.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is among the most controversial and troublesome of educational and child health issues of our day.

Gaining an understanding of ADHD is only made more difficult by the controversy that surrounds it.

The National Institute of Mental Health says this:

• "Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a condition that becomes apparent in some children in the preschool and early school years. It is hard for these children to control their behavior and/or pay attention. It is estimated that between 3 and 5 percent of children have ADHD, or approximately 2 million children in the United States. This means that in a classroom of 25 to 30 children, it is likely that at least one will have ADHD."

Oh, if it was that simple...

Let me list some of the difficulties faced in a discussion of ADHD:

• The subjectivity of ADHD's symptoms, the difficult nature of diagnosing it.
• The vested interests that educators are sometimes perceived as having as they contribute to the diagnosis of ADHD.
• The pliability of the average family doctor when faced with parents who seem to want (or not want) such a diagnosis.
• The risks and controversies associated with medicines for the disorder.

All of these have made ADHD one of the most troublesome of medical and educational issues.

The problem is simple. Most professionals agree that ADHD exists (which is also to say that there are some in the field who don't agree that the disorder is even real). The main symptoms are inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity; but these can all be caused by some other problem and exist to some lesser extent in perfectly normal children. And the symptoms develop over time. A child may exhibit one of the symptoms, that symptom may get worse over a course of months (or years), and then other symptoms may emerge.

To confuse the issue even further, ADHD comes in three different types, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV-TR). There are kids who are predominately hyperactive, kids who are predominately inattentive, and kid who have combined those first two types.

Some absolute standards do exist in the diagnosis of ADHD. First, the child has to have exhibited the symptoms of ADHD before age seven. And those symptoms have to have continued for at least six months. In addition, the behaviors must be bad enough to create "a real handicap" in at least two areas of the child's life. So if the child's only problem is school, it's almost certainly not ADHD. To be ADHD, the symptoms have to create problems in the sandbox at the park or at home, as well. The symptoms have to be "excessive, long-term, and pervasive."

The NIMH's page has much more on diagnosing ADHD.

A number of good resources on ADHD exist online. Among them:

• ADHD News
  
• Eli Lilly and Company's ADHD Dot Com page
  
• The ADHD Owner's Manuel by Child Psychiatrist Neil Alex, MD
  
• The National Resource Center on AD/HD
  
• The ADHD e-Book by Martin L. Kutscher, MD
  
• The ADHD page at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
  
• Kids' Dealth Dot Org

Fun day tomorrow....

The monitoring team comes tomorrow. They're supposed to arrive at 9am and be gone by noon or so. The rumor is that they will be looking at how well we've implemented the response to intervention approach and the three tier model. But since one of the three team members is director of compliance and monitoring for special education for the state's department of education, they may look at other issues.

We're not being singled out. Every school in the county is getting a visit. Just the same, everyone at our school is a little stressed out...

Being sick doesn't help. I'm on day six of a run of antibiotics and I think I've almost defeated whatever evil microbe took up residence in my lungs and sinuses. One or two other teachers are quite that lucky yet.

I've spent part of the night studying questions the team might ask and answers I'm suppose to give. Most are either technical answers involve data any reasonable person would have to look up or fairly obvious, simple questions any teacher ought to know the answer to (for their school).

The weather will make tomorrow just a little more trying. It seems like just three weeks ago we were all wondering if summer would ever end. Now the third cold wave in a row is coming through and temperatures have dropped enough that we may see a little snow. Snow or no snow, we will likely see a day of clouds and moisture. We need the rain, so I shouldn't complain.

My twice-per-year dental appointment was today. I left an hour early from work and got my teeth cleaned. No cavities; and Dr. Francisco says my gums and teeth are nice and healthy. I killed two birds with one stone by getting my flu shot on the way to the dentist.

I should go to bed early. My second favorite pro football team, the Steelers, is on tonight. Perhaps I'll have a shot first and watch a few minutes of the game. I’ll have to try and remember tomorrow that if I feel stressed I should try and think about how happy Heinz Ward always looks…

What is Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD)?

Note: Visit my education blog, The Green Cup.

Among the less talked about disabilities encountered in education today is Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, or FASD. The fact that it is not a topic of conversation doesn't mean that it is uncommon.

Outside a medical setting the technical definitions often get blurred in conversation and literature, but it is important to make a few distinctions. FASD is a broad term that covers almost any physical, behavioral, or educational problem that is thought to be the result of exposure to alcohol in the womb. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, on the other hand, is a more specific and profound term. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), a diagnosis of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) must include: at least three facial abnormalities; growth deficits for both height and weight; and central nervous system abnormalities. Some other terms (and acronyms) get used occasionally, as well:

• Alcohol Related Neurodevelopmental Disorder (ARND)
  
• Alcohol Related Birth Defects (ARBD)
  
• Fetal Alcohol Effect (FAE)

Since FASD is the broadest of the terms and covers basically anyone who suffers from a problem related to prenatal alcohol exposure, I'll use that term. But readers should be aware that the term FAS and FASD are used almost interchangeable much of the time.

FAS is a tragic problem in light of its preventable nature. A group called Better Endings New Beginnings has some relatively up to date U.S. statistics on FASD available. About four million babies are born in the U.S. each year. About one out of a hundred (40,000) have FASD. Of these, about one in five could be medically diagnosed as having FAS. That's 8,000 babies born each year with FAS. That means that about 100,000 children with FASD between the ages of five and 18 are in school are in school today.

Learners with FASD tend to have one or more of the following obstacles to effective learning:

• They are easily distracted
  
• They are easily frustrated
  
• The lack some motor skills
  
• They have a poor attention span
  
• They lack of organizational skills
  
• They have difficulty with concrete thinking skills
  
• They do not related well with their peers

The National Organization for Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, NOFAS, has some excellent suggestions available online for instructional strategies to use when working with FASD students. They range from simple ideas like preferential seating to assisting with social behaviors and modifying curriculum.

There is also an excellent listserv for FASD available at http://www.faslink.org/faslink.htm. It is archived at the address above and there are instructions as to how to subscribe to it there. The archive is searchable - making it a valuable Internet resource on the subject since the listserv is now ten years old. And the listserv has the advantage of being active and somewhat international. And because of the long history of the listserv it has a feel of community. People share personal information and views that, while sometimes creating discussion threads that are off topic (and heated), result in a very useful Internet experience for people who want to follow FASD issues and events.

What is Down Syndrome?

Also known as trisomy 21, Down syndrome (or Down’s Syndrome in the UK and many countries) is the most common genetic cause of mild and moderate mental retardation.

March 21 is celebrated as World Down Syndrome Day. The reason that date was picked seems obvious to those familiar with the condition. Chromosomes come in pairs. Humans have 46 pairs of chromosomes in the genetic code that tells their bodies how to develop and function. But people with Down syndrome (DS) have a third chromosome on their 21st set of chromosomes. So to celebrate the genetic uniqueness of people with DS, Down Syndrome International has picked March 21st (the 21st day of the third month) as World Down Syndrome Day.

While the most common form of DS involves a genetic condition called trisomy 21, about 10 percent of DS cases are the results of other slightly different genetic conditions. DS genetics itself is a more technical discussion than can be dealt with here.

A number of physical traits are often observable in DS children at birth. Among them:

• poor muscle tone
• a unique facial shape that includes flat facial features and a small nose
• epicanthic folds on the eyes
• an almond shape to the eyes
• abnormal ear shape
• a large tongue
• joints that extend beyond normal range
• shortened than average limbs
• a deep crease across the palm of the hand
• extra space between the big toe and other toes

DS children and adults are at high risk for a number of medical conditions. Heart defects and problems related to the stomach and esophagus are not uncommon. Sleep apnea occurs often in those with Down syndrome. Difficulties in the lower digestive tract (including bowel obstructions) are also common, as are ear infections.

The cognitive functioning of children with DS varies greatly. One of the most controversial issues within the DS communities is the validity of the various tests used by school psychologists to measure cognitive functioning (the term "intelligence" tends to be avoided these days in the context of such tests). Because DS children tend to have reduced verbal skills, many parents and advocates do not feel such tests accurately measure the cognitive abilities of a DS child. That said, some adults with DS have pursued their education to the level of obtaining college degrees (admittedly usually with some level of accommodation for their disability) and the vast majority of DS children will learn to read, write, and perform basic math operations.

DS raises a number of educational issues. There is often a wide gap between the ability DS students have to understand ideas and their ability to express those ideas. Speech therapy is a common part of education for students with DS. Regular occupational therapy is also commonly used to help address delays in both fine and gross motor skills. The most controversial and emotional issue that has to be resolved in the educational environment is the extent to which a DS child is educated with non-disabled peers their own age. DS students usually experience delays in their emotional and social development and these delays lead to a wider and wider gap each year between the social abilities of a DS student and those of their same-aged peers. Whether it is called mainstreaming or inclusion, educating DS students in the general education classroom with their chronological peers has both advantages and disadvantages that must be weighed in each year's IEP meeting.

The quality of life for people with DS has improved tremendously in the last century. At the start of the Great Depression the average person with DS lived to be all of nine years old. Today individuals with DS often live into their 50's. And while life for a DS person a couple of generations ago often involved institutionalization and the isolation and loss of independence that comes with it, today individuals with DS often live happy, relatively independent lives that include marriage and a job. The 1996 film Duo pictured many of the challenges of life with DS today (and featured a leading actor with DS).

A few Down syndrome links:

• NDSS - National Down Syndrome Society.
  
• NADS - National Association for Down Syndrome.
  
• Down's Syndrome Association of the UK.
  
• Canadian Down Syndrome Society.
  
• Down Syndrome at kids Health Dot Org.

What a Special Ed Teacher Needs...

Note: Visit my education blog, The Green Cup.

A friend of my is taking a graduate classas part of a degreee program in school administration. She recently told me she had to interview a special education teacher and turn in the interview as part of an assignment. The interview had one questions. It asked about the sort of support and participation a special education teacher needs from a principal in order to create and implement individualized education plans (IEPs) for their exceptional students. Below, with some minor editing, is the answer I gave her...

---

The principal is the single most important special educator in any school. I need them to realize that. I think mine does at my current school.

One of the most profound indicators of support I see from a school administrator is participation in IEP meetings. I have worked as a special educator at four schools now. One of my principals in the past refused to even attend IEP meetings, much less chair them as required by law. They wanted to falsify the paperwork to make it look as though they’d been present during the discussions and they wanted me to participate in the fraud. The lack of value for disabled students and for the processes mandated by IDEA that such actions communicate to me as a special educator made it difficult for me to respect the leadership of that individual in any realm of school governance. I need to see an administrator take charge of the process and make an effort to ensure that we as a school are doing our best for our exceptional students – individually, one student at a time. My current principal does that.

I need my principal ensure that my schedule allows me time to carry out non-instructional tasks like monitoring students I don’t actually teach and planning with teachers with whom I co-teach. My current schedule allows that. Without the time to monitor students, it becomes almost impossible to determine whether their IEPs are succeeding.

I need my principal to communicate to the general education staff a level of expectation regarding the school's exceptional students. I feel that I am personally responsible for the educational success of every student in my school whether they are eligible for services under IDEA or not – personally, but not solely responsible. I need my principal to create an institutional environment that imparts that sense of responsibility to the general education staff at my school. The principal has to make sure that the general education teachers feel responsible for the educational success of exceptional students. Otherwise, those students will fail. My current principal is pretty good at that.

Those are the primary issue I see regarding a school administrator’s role in helping to create and implement IEPs.

What is a 504 Plan?

Note: Visit my education blog, The Green Cup.

What is a 504 Plan? Do you need one? How is it different from an Individualized Education Plan (IEP)? These are important question if your child has a disability.

In the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Public Law No. 93-112), Section 504 states that: "no otherwise qualified individual with a disability...shall solely by reason of his/her disability be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination to any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance..." (emphasis added).

At the moment, every public school system in America receives some degree of federal funding. Because of this, they are all subject to this law. What that means for you is this: if your child has a disability, the school system must accommodate that disability in some way - under Section 504 if no other way is available. Probably that will mean the development of a formal plan for defining and providing those accommodations.

A 504 Plan is civil rights document. It protects your child's rights regarding access to education. Often the disability is a medical problem like asthma, childhood diabetes, or allergies.

Sometimes the problem is more complicated and the school system and parents must decide whether the child needs a 504 Plan under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 or an IEP under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The difference between the two, in theory, is simple. Technically, a 504 Plan provides accommodations for the disability. Accommodations are environmental in nature. Changes are made to the learning environment:

• a handicapped bathroom is installed.
  
• an elevator is made available.
  
• assistive technology (possibly something as simple as a cassette tape player) is provided.
  
• perhaps the student is given extra time on some assignments or tests.

The curriculum itself does not change. An IEP, on the other hand, is for students whose disabilities require specially designed instruction. The curriculum itself must be modified in order for the student to receive an appropriate education.

Do you need a 504 Plan? A 504 Plan formalizes a set of accommodations that the school may be quite willing to make informally. For example, if your child has asthma and you bring the school some kind of a medical statement to document the fact, the school may be quiet willing to:

• alter the child's schedule of physical activity.
  
• hold medication in the office for the child and administer it when appropriate.
  
• commit to take a particular set of steps in the event of an emergency.

Under these circumstances, does the 504 Plan serve a purpose? Maybe not. But having the formal document in place can be reassuring for everyone involved. And sometimes the exact accommodations to be used aren't as obvious as in the case above. In those cases, the formal plan helps people remember what to do.

There are some basic steps involved in obtaining a 504 Plan. The first is referral. A teacher, support staff, a parent, or a medical professional may refer the student for consideration, usually by calling the school and speaking to the principal or the chair of a school team that considers such matters.

The next step is a meeting to discuss the referral; perhaps a 504 Plan will emerge from that meeting, or perhaps more than one meeting will be required as the team involved gathers information. The last step is to review the effectiveness of the 504 Plan at some later date.

A 504 Plan can be an effective tool for safeguarding your child's right to an appropriate education.

Weather, Pollen and the Start of School

I have not died. But it has been almost two weeks since I managed to publish a blog post. The start of school, combined with a few days away from my keyboard for Labor Day weekend and a sense of mild depression over the Tennessee Volunteers not winning their first football game of the season, has simply made it difficult for me to blog...

I suspect that heat has also played a role in my inactivity. There have now been at least 17 days this summer where the temperature at the airport in nearby Bluefield hit at least 90. Laugh if you must, but 90F degrees is hot here. And 17 days of such weather was the all time record. We have had two days of 90-plus temperatures in September. This is the first time in 50 years the mercury has reached 90 in September. Most of our schools have no air-conditioning at all and relatively poor ventilation. Since I first went back to my school on August 24, parts of the many building have felt like working inside an oven. I come home damp from sweating all day and dehydrated and tired. And then I nap instead of blogging.

Goldenrod is also in full bloom. It has taken over the hillside behind our house and most of the valley's I drive through to work. It creates a pretty color to the countryside. But it also turns my eyes red and makes the itch. Oh well; it happens every year. A nice rain would wash the pollen out of the air for a few days. But we are near drought conditions and no one remembers the last nice rain.

Well, time to make breakfast. Perhaps I'll blog more about the new school year soon...

Special Education Vocab: Least Restrictive Environment

The law says that your school system is obligated to educate a student with disabilities in the least restrictive environment (LRE) possible. Do you know what that MEANS?

What is LRE? The long list of technical terms in special education can be daunting to some parents. And since LRE is one of the most basic terms, I thought I'd take a little time here to make sure you could find a clear, concise definition...

The Least Restrictive Environment Coalition has one of the best explanations of the term least restrictive environment that I've come across on the Internet:

The Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) is defined as the educational setting where a child with disabilities can receive a free appropriate public education (FAPE) designed to meet his or her education needs while being educated with peers without disabilities in the regular educational environment to the maximum extent appropriate.

Their page goes on to look at a number of related questions about LRE and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), LRE and Section 504, etc.

Least Restrictive Environment is really a pretty simple concept. Any child (disabled or not) should be given an appropriate education. A child with a disability should be educated with its non-disabled peers. Sometimes a child's disability means that what's appropriate for the disabled child is different from what's appropriate for the non-disabled child. And, sometimes, the differences between what's appropriate for the disabled child and what's appropriate for his or her non-disabled peers means that the child with a disability has to be taken out of the general education setting in order to receive an appropriate education. Among the easiest examples to understand, a child with orthopedic impairments who is bound to a wheel chair may receive physical therapy during some of the time each week that his non-disabled peers spend in the gym for physical education.

The point is this, if a child with a disability is going to be removed from the regular education environment where his non-disabled peers are being educated, there needs to be some rationale, some justification as to why it needs to happen. And that justification needs to be articulated individually for each segment of time where the child is being removed: a justification for removing the child from reading and/or language arts, a justification for removing the child from math, a justification for removing the child from physical education, etc.

In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown vs. Board of Education that separate educations could not be equal education. The ruling's initial affect was to end racial segregation. But eventually the courts applied the ruling to disability rights. Thus Least Restrictive Environment is a civil rights issue for people with disabilities. In a nutshell, schools cannot segregate students with disabilities from the non-disabled peers except when the separation is essential for an appropriate education...

Why Special Education Labels Matter

Does it matter how your child is classified as a special education student? I mean, after all, Special Ed is SPECIAL ED: right?

I subscribe to a number of email lists on various topics related to education and twice now in the last few months the question of labels and why they matter has come up on one of these email lists.

The most recent occasion was a posting on a mailing list dedicated to special education law. A parent emailed the list to say that now, at the age of 12 and after over seven years as a special education student, her child had been diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome, a communication disorder that falls under the umbrella of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The child had previously been diagnosed with some disorders that led to a special education label of emotionally disturbed. And the parent wanted to know why it mattered and whether she should push to have the classification changed.

One of the people who replied to her email was Carol Moore, a school psychologist in Oregon. I liked her answers (they were more thorough and systematic than my own) and, with her permission, I've quoted them here for my readers:

1. The "right" classification is the accurate one. One person mentioned that the child had a chromosomal disorder that causes low cognition, motor difficulties, speech language, etc. In that case, the most appropriate classification would be Mental Retardation, since language difficulties are subsumed under that label, as would be behavioral difficulties, etc. The motor issues would still be addressed in the IEP, but that is not the primary factor affecting the student's educational performance. Other examples: a kiddo has a head injury and subsequent learning and behavior difficulty. The appropriate classification is TBI, not Mental Retardation, Emotional Disturbance, or Learning Disability; another child has a variety of medical diagnoses...let's say, ADHD, Bipolar, Tourettes, etc. The appropriate classification is Other Health Impaired.
   
   

2. Too often parents and other team members would prefer to use a more palatable category, say Developmentally Delayed, when the child is clearly Mentally Retarded, to give a common example. This hurts the family by raising the expectation that the child may develop out of her difficulties, reducing community services and supports that may be available, and perhaps leading to school based services that are less appropriate.
   
   

3. Categorical eligibility has an educational benefit...staff must learn about the conditions that give rise to an OHI or Autism eligibility, for example, whereas an Emotionally Disturbed or Learning Disabled student may be considered "someone else's problem," specifically, the SPED staff's vs. the regular education teacher's.
   
   

4. Dollars flow through special education eligibilities via formulas that are established by the state. In my state, for example, the category of Traumatic Brain Injury is finally being added to the low incidence regional disability services, opening up the possibility of additional resources being available to students in that category. This is what happened with Autism spectrum disorder...parents advocated and the disorder became recognized and resources flowed.
   
   

5. Finally, it is possible to have multiple eligibilities, if they all make sense. Some disorders "trump" or subsume others. For example, an Autistic student should not have an ED label UNLESS the emotional (and not typical behavioral manifestations of autism) component is significantly interfering and not automatically a part of the autism...perhaps depression. A child with an OHI eligibility due to ADHD should not also be labeled ED for the same reason...behavioral difficulties are part of the ADHD. Again, if something rather different were presented, say, substantial depression or anxiety, then addition of ED may be warranted.

Note: the ellipses were part of Moore's remarks and do not indicate that something has been deleted...

Moore concluded with a remark I had to smile at: "If you're now confused by all this, take heart: so are all the teams I've worked with. The primary thing to bear in mind is to accurately portray the student's difficulties."

The discussion took place on the Reed Martin Special Ed Law mailing list.

Special education labels DO matter for other reasons, too. A label/placement can determine what teacher a child sees. Different special education teachers may have different certifications.

In the not too distant past I was involved in a discussion on an email list on Down Syndrome. Let me say at the start that it is a great mailing list. If you are interested in issues related to Down Syndrome, the Down Syndrome List is the place, and I highly recommend them.

That said, the discussion I'm referring to lasted a week or more and shifted between a couple of focus points, depending on who was contributing at the moment and what their exact interests were. The focuses included:

The role of IQ (and, probably more importantly, IQ testing) in determining the eligibility category of a special education student.
The importance of inclusion for mentally impaired students (something the people on the list placed a higher value on than most special education parents)
And a classification distinction my particular state makes between students who are mildly mentally impaired and those who are moderately mentally impaired.
The discussion was animated. With several people replying to several people as they checked their email, it was sometimes like being at a table where everyone was talking at once. And, to be honest, I'm not an average member of the list; I'm a teacher, while most members of the list are caregivers for a child or adult with Down Syndrome.

At times in this particular discussion I felt like I got slapped around a little. (But, like I said, it's a good list and, hey, that's okay.)

The question of the validity of IQ tests -- what they really measure and to what extent they accurately gauge intelligence -- I leave for some other day (like when I do my doctorate, or something). But, like it or not, IQ ("general intellectual functioning," in the words of the policy) is specifically used in my state's policy to determine whether a student is mentally impaired. To be classified as mentally impaired, the student has to have an IQ of less than about 70. My state goes on, following the American Medical Association's model, and classifies mentally impaired students into sub-classes for eligibility purposes:

• Mildly Mentally Impaired if their IQ falls between about 55 and about 70
  
• Moderately Mentally Impaired if their IQ falls between about 40 and about 55
  
• Severely Mentally Impaired if their IQ falls between about 25 and about 40
  
• Profoundly Mentally Impaired if their IQ is less than about 25

"About" is an important word. The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale uses slightly different numbers.

But why does it matter whether a student is classified as moderately mentally impaired or mildly mentally impaired? Because teachers get certified to work with mildly mentally impaired students or they get certified to work with moderately mentally impaired students, etc. That means that if a student is classified as moderately mentally impaired (as Down Syndrome students often are) they become the educational responsibility of someone certified in working with moderately mentally impaired students -- and in my county we don't have someone with that certification at every school.

It's possible to be certified in more than one area of mentally impaired; but I don't know anyone who is (and the academic work involved would be considerable). And if an eligibility committee decides that Johnny is moderately mentally impaired instead of mildly mentally impaired, that may ultimately affect which school Johnny attends, what his program of study looks like, whether he is required to take the same high stakes test that most of the school's students take, etc. At the very least it would mean that the student would have to attend school somewhere in the county where a teacher certified to work with moderately mentally impaired students was available - and there's no teacher like that at my school!

Why doesn't my county place a teacher certified in teaching the moderately mentally impaired at every school? They don't exist. We don't have that many teachers certified in teaching the moderately mentally impaired. There's a shortage. Just like there's a shortage in my area of math and science teachers for the middle and high school grades.

At one point some of the participants in the discussion drew the conclusion that we segregated moderately mentally impaired students in my county. Of course, that's not the case (it would be a gross violation of the student's civil rights). And while a moderately mentally impaired student that lived near my school might have to take the bus to a different elementary school so that someone properly certified would be around to be responsible for their educational experience, that school would be a perfectly normal elementary school. But I don't think some of the people in the discussion ever bought that. And, as I said above, Down Syndrome parents seem to place a higher value than most special education parents on seeing their children taught in an environment where they are with their non-disabled peers...

But as you can see, whether a child is classified as moderately mentally impaired or mildly mentally impaired could possible make a big difference in their educational experience. Labels do matter.

Special Education Vocab: FAPE

The law says that your school system is obligated to provide a student with disabilities with a FAPE – a free appropriate public education. Do you know what that MEANS?

Technical jargon can get in the way of understanding your child's rights.

What is a FAPE? The long list of technical terms in special education can be daunting to some parents. And since FAPE is one of the most basic terms, I thought I'd take a little time here to make sure you could find a clear, concise definition...

The Special Education Lawyers website has one of the best explanations of the term FAPE that I've come across on the Internet. Their page looks at each word individually and talks briefly about what it means for an education to be free, what it means for it to be appropriate, etc.

The concept of a FAPE comes from a court ruling in 1971. In the case Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Children v. the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, a federal judge ruled that retarded children had a right to a free public education under the "equal protection" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. The case affected students in Pennsylvania. But the next year a case in the District of Columbia, Mills v. the Board of Education, made the concept of FAPE binding on all schools in the U.S.

To catch up with the courts, Congress passed a number of laws over the next few years. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, along with the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EAHCA) in 1975 were the most important. EAHCA was reauthorized in 1990 as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

The concepts involved in FAPE are fairly straightforward. Education should be free - from transportation back and forth to school to the cost of textbooks, if it is essential to education it should not cost the student (or the student's guardians) anything. Education should be appropriate; this idea is harder to define and is usually the point of contention when disagreement occurs between a child's family and a school system. And education should be offered by a public agency (a government run school system).

What is (and is not) appropriate is a changing concept because education is a growing academic field and because values change with time.

• Fifty years ago, for example, sex education would probably not have been considered appropriate for many students; but our values have changed.
• Twenty-five years ago it might have been consider appropriate to "guide" students with disabilities into academic paths or tracks that focused on trade skills like auto mechanics; but changes in our values and in the economy have broadened the academic and career choices for many disabled students.
• And advances in our understanding of how children learn regularly require that we re-evaluate the methods we use to teach all children.

What is appropriate changes with time. But all students with disabilities in America have a right to a free appropriate public education - FAPE.