Standards for Special Education
by Elizabeth Gehrman
Professor of Practice Tom Hehir
As a former director of the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Special Education Programs under President Bill Clinton, Thomas Hehir played a leading role in the 1997 reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The HGSE professor of practice has recently published New Directions in Special Education: Eliminating Ableism in Policy and Practice (Harvard Education Press).
Q:What is ableism, exactly?
A: It's like racism and sexism. It's the concept that society's attitudes toward the disabled are often very negative and result in prejudice and discrimination. Often people don't even realize they have these perceptions--but they can distort the ways in which disabled children are educated. When I worked for the Clinton administration, standards-based reform was just beginning to take shape in this country, and in most places that were establishing curriculum standards and accountability structures, kids with disabilities were not part of it. People just didn't believe the kids were capable.
Q: But hasn't the world changed since then?
A: Yes. One of the things that is now more widely recognized is that if it's important to teach non-disabled people to read, then it's important to teach disabled people to read--or do math or science--and to measure how they're doing at it.
So increasingly, disabled kids are mainstreamed, and the reauthorization of IDEA set up explicit requirements that they be part of the accountability system. Schools must make accommodations for kids who need them--a blind child can take the test in Braille, for instance, and kids with learning disabilities get extra time. Children who have cognitive disabilities or mental retardation are measured differently, but they still "count."
Q: How many of the children in public schools today are considered disabled?
A: The way the law is written, roughly 3 percent of students receive special treatment, and about 1 percent are part of the alternate-assessment program. That translates to 20 to 30 percent of the total population of disabled children; so under No Child Left Behind (NCLB), which was signed by President Bush in 2002, 70 to 80 percent count in the regular way.
Q: How does all this affect MCAS, for example?
A: In the past 10 years, since standards-based reform began, the achievement levels of kids with disabilities have increased significantly. More of them are taking challenging academic subjects, and dropout rates have gone down. These are good things.
Q: So it has been a success?
A: Yes, but unfortunately, not an unqualified success. There's a significant difference between low-income and affluent communities as it relates to special-ed and MCAS. Kids at the intersection of poverty and disability--both of which are big risk factors for not doing well in life--are not benefiting nearly to the degree they should be, or getting access to the type of education that would prepare them for success on MCAS or in life.
Q: What do we need to do for these children?
A: We need to start asking questions such as: Should these kids be off all summer? Should they have extended days? Would high-quality preschool programs help? On the positive side, NCLB is making these children more visible, so they're not off in a corner of the building making potholders or something instead of learning algebra. But the downside of these policies is people have not taken the next step and said: Wait a second, there are kids who are being left behind, and we have to do more for them. The question is, do we have the political will to change things?
Q: Is the percentage of disabled children higher in low-income areas?
A: It's not if you look at the total number of kids with disabilities. There's a greater tendency in affl uent areas to identify kids on the margin as disabled. But impoverished areas lack prenatal care, have more lead in the environment, and have an increased risk for trauma, leading to more signifi cant disabilities such as multiple issues, deafness, blindness, mental retardation, et cetera.
Q: So that makes it even more difficult for low-income school districts?
A: Definitely. Overall we need to be reversing our assumptions on how we fund schools that serve large numbers of children living in poverty. They should be more resourced, not less. We should be looking at this in terms of what we need to do differently to get these kids up to speed. The local communities--which already have a lower tax base--bear too large a share of the financial burden, despite federal laws. In order to give these kids greater likelihood of passing the MCAS test and being educated at the level they're capable of, we have to do more, not less. It's just logic.
About the Article
A version of this article originally appeared in the Summer 2006 issue of Ed., the magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
For More Information
More information about Thomas Hehir is available in the Faculty Profiles.
