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Topic: Identifying Special Education Students
Audience: General and Special Education Teachers
Professional Perspective: As a current General Education teacher but future Curriculum Coordinator it is important to understand how to help and identify students with Special Educations by creating Curriculum for those students as well. This guide is intended to prepare General and Special Education teachers to help students that are in the programs of Special Education be successful. For myself I did not understand anything with Special Education and never predicted myself to work with any students. Now that I have been working with the Special Education department, I am open-minded and understand the importance of the Special Education department. To have the desire to want students to be successful is a goal for each student but to go above and beyond to ensure that these students truly are getting the help they need to be successful gives that piece of your heart relief that one more student is given resources to be successful. As I am learning new things about the Special Education Students, I want to aid other teachers as well.

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I had the pleasure of interviewing the marvelous woman, Jody Rendon (personal communication, November 29, 2021). She is dedicated to students and this issue especially; she is an advocate to get justice for these students. Rendon has always shared her passion for Special Education students and the fire that this woman has for these students is amazing.
Why Identifying Special Education Students is important?
When asked why "Identifying Special Education Students" is important for General Educations teachers she shared her reasons. First, many schools in the state of Texas dissuade teachers from creating referrals which leads to under identification of special education students. Secondly, by law general education teachers are "mandated by law to identify students with disabilities". Lastly, district administrators deter referrals which then makes students go longer without having the opportunity to be identified.
Best Practices:

Document interventions (this should NOT delay the referral process.

Document your concerns in writhing.

Stand your ground for any student that you strongly believe the student has a disability.

Area emerging issue:
Rendon did mention one issue faced by general education teachers is lack of support in the referral process. Most schools require certain things depending on the protocol the school follows prevent referrals. Due to teachers unable to have excess time to heap on mounds of paperwork.
Interviewee:
Jody Rendon, former Head of Special Education, Rocksprings ISD

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Summary
The National Education Association (NEA) supports special education students to be in a general education setting. Each school and district must conduct and design programs.
Reference
National Education Association
Link
Special Education | NEA

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Access to a free, quality education is the key to the uniquely American promise of equal opportunity for all. This promise was formally extended to children with disabilities with the passage in 1975 of landmark federal legislation known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). That promise-worthy and just-remains unfulfilled.

Key Facts About Funding IDEA

Public schools across the country today provide special education services to more than 7 million youngsters-14% of public school students.

The federal law has always included a commitment to pay 40 percent of the average per student cost for every special education student. In the 2019 fiscal year, the federal government provided less than half of the full funding level for states.¹

The federal share of the average per student cost was 13% in the 2020 fiscal year. This is the lowest share since the 2000 fiscal year.

In the school year 2020-21, the federal appropriation was $23.6 billion less than full funding, which states and districts had to cover.

This shortfall creates a burden on local communities and denies full opportunity to all students-with and without disabilities.

NEA Priorities for Improvements to IDEA

Congress reauthorized IDEA on November 19, 2004. NEA gave qualified support to the reauthorization bill, which included positive provisions on professional development, paperwork reduction, early intervention and discipline. However, challenges remain. NEA continues to push for:

full funding for special education

improving the definition of "highly qualified" as it relates to special education teachers, and

more accurately measuring special educator workloads.

In fact, fully funding the federal commitment to special education - which amounts to just part of the actual cost - tops the list of key IDEA issues that NEA has focused on since the 2004 reauthorization process. NEA and the major national organizations representing teachers, parents, school administrators and school boards support a proposal that would phase in full funding.

Background

Educators and parents had to re-think how to best teach students with disabilities after the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA '97) was reauthorized by Congress in 1997. IDEA '97 focused on a number of then new issues, including:

Access -- Assuring that students with disabilities have access to the general education curriculum and appropriate general education classes

Discipline -- Assuring that there are alternative placement options for dangerous students so they can continue their education without hampering the education of other students

Assessment -- Assuring the accurate and appropriate assessment of the academic achievement of students with disabilities.

Current assessment and support challenges

"Special education" issues affect general programs in a number of ways. Over the past 10 years, the number of U.S. students enrolled in special education programs has risen 30 percent. Three out of every four students with disabilities spend part or all of their school day in a general education classroom. In turn, nearly every general education classroom across the country includes students with disabilities. Each school and school district must determine the best way to conduct programs and figure out how to pay for them.

In addition, wanting to measure whether or not students with disabilities are achieving at higher levels, and how well they are progressing in the general education curriculum, lawmakers added a requirement in IDEA '97 that includes students with disabilities in state- and district-wide assessments.

The accountability provisions of the recently reauthorized federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) raise even more questions about how to appropriately assess and support achievement for students with disabilities.

But as the nation's parents, citizens, educators and elected officials tackle the problems facing special education, NEA urges everyone to acknowledge our successes. Local public schools are now educating millions of disabled children, and a growing number of them are graduating from high school. Only three decades ago, these same children would have been isolated in separate institutions or simply kept at home, with little or no chance of ever becoming independent, productive, taxpaying citizens.
1. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Funding: A Primer. Congressional Research Service, 2019.

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Access to a free, quality education is the key to the uniquely American promise of equal opportunity for all. This promise was formally extended to children with disabilities with the passage in 1975 of landmark federal legislation known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). That promise-worthy and just-remains unfulfilled.

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Summary

Since 1975, students are distinguished as special education if their IQ scores meet or do not meet a certain score.

There is not justice for students because the school system fails them to help them be successful.

With not enough sufficient evidence teachers do not have enough to stand their case.

Reference
Vincelli, C. M. S. (2021, April 20). Students are slipping through the cracks of special education. schools must do better. - edsurge news. EdSurge. Retrieved December 2, 2021, from https://www.edsurge.com/news/2021-04-20-students-are-slipping-through-the-cracks-of-special-education-schools-must-do-better.
Link
Students Are Slipping Through the Cracks of Special Education. Schools Must Do Better. | EdSurge News

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This is the story of a student who got lost in the system. Jason* was a 10th grader affected by the pandemic like many other students and their families. He came to school one day and explained to his teacher that his mother had lost her job at a day care due to declining enrollment. His father was working two jobs trying to make enough money to support his family, which included his younger brother and sister. And Jason was upset because he feared they would lose their home and have to move before he completed high school.

Jason explained that he wanted to support his family by applying for a job at the local convenience store. But he had a problem. As he very maturely shared with his teacher, he couldn't read the application.

The teacher reached out to me, an education consultant recently hired by the school district to support struggling learners. She said, "My heart is broken." She invited me to meet with Jason, who filled me in on his situation. As he told me his story, my face turned white as a ghost. I thought, "How did it come to this? How did we miss him?"

Jason's teacher assisted him with his job application. But did we actually help him or simply provide a band-aid to a larger, systematic issue?

As an educator, it's easy to get lost in the day-to-day "administrivia" of making hundreds of decisions a week. And when we work with so many students, we can sometimes lose sight of the bigger picture. It can be challenging to see how our decisions and actions in the moment affect students over time. Especially because we are often reactive, instead of proactive, causing us to be less methodical.

After some investigating on my part, I learned that Jason had been with the school district since second grade. Yet when I went in search of data to see if he had ever been identified as a student in need of assistance or intervention, the issue was more than clear. There were no records beyond state standardized testing data available for me to review. Besides these test scores, I had no idea who Jason was as a student or what his needs were.

If I did a lot of digging and the results were dismal, what could his teachers know from year to year as he transitioned from grade to grade? How could they know what specific areas of concern to target if they were just getting to know him in September and October?

The truth is, they couldn't. My investigation led me to one simple conclusion: The lack of a coherent system failed him. Our system, that we governed as administrators, failed him.

We had to do better. The question was, how?

The Evolution of Response to Intervention

When President Gerald Ford signed the Education for All Handicapped Children's Act in 1975, it was because public schools had a history of systematically denying students with special needs access to a public school education.

Originally students were provided special education services based on the discrepancy model. This model compared students' results on a battery of IQ tests to their actual academic achievement levels and anticipated grade-level performance. A significant discrepancy between expected and actual achievement resulted in placement in special education services. In other scenarios, students who struggled academically might test directly into special education based solely on IQ test scores. Special education services often included classes separate from the regular classroom.

Once education professionals realized that there was a difference between students who needed special education versus those who were not succeeding but did not meet eligibility criteria for special education services, there was a clear need for a better support structure.

Through research and evaluation, psychologists in the 1970s and '80s sought to develop a new framework to stop over-identifying students as disabled. Their goals were to:

Identify students who needed special education services more accurately.

Serve the needs of students who required more instruction to succeed but did not necessarily display a learning disability.

Researchers and teachers experimented with identifying students who were not achieving by providing extra instruction in a systematic way. The results were monitored for student growth. If the student did not show success, educators would offer more intensive, individualized instruction.

A key aspect of this developing framework, known as Response to Intervention (RTI), was taking a team approach to student learning. Teachers and other educators, such as a school counselor, would meet to identify students who were in need of interventions and to determine which methods to try. As teachers applied the interventions and collected data, the team would reconvene to discuss student progress. This helped address an issue across the board rather than having instructional interventions taking place in an isolated environment. This framework grew into the idea of a student support team, which included teachers, counselors, parents, and sometimes, special educators.

The Power of Assessment

Digging through Jason's files and coming up empty reinforced my belief that, if we had a true district-wide RTI framework with a uniform approach to assessment, we would have uncovered Jason's needs sooner. Assessment data would have flagged Jason as a general education student with learning gaps who would have benefited from intervention. More importantly, this information would have stayed with Jason as he progressed through school.

Since the inception of Response to Intervention decades ago, some district administrators have worked to implement this process with varying success. Yet it wasn't until RTI was funded through the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act in 2004 that more districts seriously began to consider adopting the framework.

A key challenge facing RTI implementation is there is no guide or handbook. Special education has legal requirements that enforce specific timelines and procedures to govern it. In contrast, RTI has research to validate the practice, but no objective guidance on the "how."

Although the RTI framework includes many components, Jason guided my focus on assessment. There are five essential pieces to implementing and improving an RTI assessment system:

1. Identification of a universal screening tool that compares students to a normed-population of students in both language arts, math, social-emotional learning and behavior.

2. An assessment calendar, by grade level, that is created annually to ensure that each student receives all assessments needed to identify potential areas of concern. It is important to note that secondary and elementary assessment systems will be different.

3. A complete inventory of assessments by grade level that indicates the name and type of assessment, the subject area, the frequency that the assessment should be given, and skills being assessed.

4. An assessment system that houses all of the data for review and follows a student's record from year to year.

5. Developing both district- and school-based data teams to analyze the data collected, make decisions about which students need support in which specific areas, and create district cut scores.

When building an assessment system, we want to avoid over-assessment. Districts should design systems that assess students in each of the core academic, SEL, and behavioral areas. Additional assessments should be introduced only when more information is needed to develop an individualized action plan. The assessment data should drive overall instruction and assist educators in identifying and implementing interventions that target and support students individually.

Jason's story was a teachable moment for me. It reminded me that if we as district leaders had made different decisions or focused on our RTI assessment systems sooner, the outcome of this situation might have been different. If we became more proactive, we could uncover gaps sooner to prevent students from facing challenging moments down the line.

And we owe it to our students to be better equipped and more systematic in our assessment process. By reforming our thinking and our processes, we can support so many more students sooner. As we emerge from the disruptions of this pandemic and work to identify the ways our students have been additionally challenged, now is the perfect time to implement a research-based framework to catch those students who might otherwise get lost.

A few short months after I spoke with Jason, I had an opportunity to revisit his situation with his teacher. Thanks to her efforts, Jason was able to complete his application and was gainfully and successfully employed. Jason continues to work 15 hours a week. To provide additional reading support, we were able to enroll him in a reading course in school and focus some instruction on technology tools that can help him independently read text that may be too difficult. Most importantly, I encouraged Jason's teacher to praise him for his self-advocacy and to let him know that his story would be a catalyst for systemic change.

* Name changed to protect student privacy.

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Students Are Slipping Through the Cracks of Special Education. Schools Must Do Better. - EdSurge News

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This is the story of a student who got lost in the system. Jason* was a 10th grader affected by the pandemic like many other students and their families. He came to school one day and explained to his teacher that his mother had lost her job at a day care due to declining enrollment.

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Bulleted Summary

Students with disabilities receive education from public school.

Policies would keep students out of special education but also qualified for special education.

Parents fear student is getting appropriate education which the student is entitled to.

Reference
Samuels, C. A. (2021, November 18). Special education is broken. Education Week. Retrieved December 2, 2021, from https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/special-education-is-broken/2019/01.
Link
Special Education Is Broken (edweek.org)

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Editor's Note: Associate Editor Christina Samuels covers special education. This analysis is part of a special report exploring pressing trends in education. Read the full report: 10 Big Ideas in Education.
The year was 1975, and President Gerald Ford was ambivalent about the law he was about to sign, guaranteeing that students with disabilities are entitled to education in the public schools. He said so in what was then an infrequently used presidential option-a signing statement.

No one could argue against the law's goals, Ford wrote. But the "Education for All Handicapped Children Act" was underfunded, promised too much to families, and was burdened by complex technical requirements, he said.

Fortunately, he said, the law wasn't scheduled to be fully implemented until 1978. "There is time to revise the legislation and come up with a program that is effective and realistic," Ford wrote.

That was optimistic.

Over 43 years later, others still hold Ford's concerns, and they aren't opponents of the law. Rather, people who have spent their professional careers or personal lives deeply involved in the cause of educating students with disabilities are the same ones who are troubled-publicly and privately-about special education as functional law and as a process intended to get students the education that they need.

What is now the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act was the culmination of decades of activism all over the country. Now that the law is here, it will take a revival of that same spirit to fix what is broken in the implementation.

And that implementation is broken in some fundamental ways. Here are a few: Children with disabilities aren't always identified for needs when they have them. When they are identified, what happens in the classroom is hit-or-miss. And, as Ford and countless school officials, advocates, parents, and teachers have said since 1975, there's not enough money in the law to accomplish all that it requires.

Let's take a look at the process of identifying children with disabilities, one of the underpinnings of the IDEA. School districts have to seek out and evaluate any child in their boundaries that may have a disability-a process that the special education law calls "child find."

But the process of identifying children with certain disabilities-dyslexia, for example-is exquisitely sensitive to human pressure and to public policy. After years of growth, the overall special education population dipped in the early 2000s. Why? It's not clear.

There could be a policy driver: The 2000s saw many schools adopt "response to intervention," an educational process intended to steer students to appropriate interventions before they fall too far behind academically.

But those same policies can also be used to keep children out of special education who should qualify for it. Texas was called out earlier this year by the U.S. Department of Education for failing to identify and evaluate its students properly, thus keeping its special education enrollment numbers artificially low. State officials say the price tag for providing additional special education services could be more than $3 billion over the next three years.

Another twist to the identification issue: Recent research shows that minority children are actually less likely than their white peers to receive special education services, upending years of other studies. The pushback against those findings has been fierce.

And then there is what happens once students are identified. Response to intervention was rolled out to schools with great fanfare and is now used in some form in more than 70 percent of school districts. But a major goal of RTI is to keep children out of special education-an acknowledgement that some children are receiving services who should not really need them, and that other students need extra academic help who aren't identified with a disability.

Does RTI work? One large study in 2015 showed that students in the program who were supposedly receiving targeted interventions actually performed worse than virtually identical peers who were not in an RTI process. RTI supporters say the problem is poor implementation that needs simplification.

But if RTI is currently too complicated for most schools to implement well, what does that mean for the teachers and principals who are working so hard to put it in place, or for the students who are enrolled in it right now?

And then, there's the money. Congress never funded the IDEA for the full amount that was authorized when the law was first signed. At that time, Congress estimated that it cost states twice as much to educate a student with disabilities as it does to educate a general education student, and the law authorizes the federal government to give up to 40 percent of that excess cost to states.

Congress has never come close to that mark; its $12.3 billion contribution in fiscal 2018 is more like 15 percent of the excess cost.

But we don't have a good idea nationally of how much is spent on special education, or if it's still correct that special education students cost school districts twice as much to educate. The last national spending numbers are more than 20 years old. And even if more money was poured into the system, would it flow to where it's needed? A 2014 report by New America, a Washington-based think tank, asserted that the out-of-date, complicated formula that the federal government uses to distribute money to states has resulted in small districts getting more federal money per student than larger districts, and shrinking school systems receiving more federal dollars than school districts that are growing.

Right now, advocates have been in something of a defensive crouch over the law, which is nearly 10 years overdue for reauthorization. A new Congress might have a new attitude, however. And when and if it picks the law up again, here's some questions that need answering:

How much does it really cost to educate students with disabilities? The numbers often cited don't take into account changes such as the growth of students with autism or impairments such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, the rise of inclusion, or the increasing availability of interventions outside of the formal structure of special education.

Should special education be provided primarily by special education teachers? Most children with disabilities spend most or all of their time in the general education classroom. Given the chronic shortage of special education teachers, it may be time to make all teachers learn the fundamentals of what special education entails. This is already happening in some places. For example, at Syracuse University, any undergraduate student who wants to be an elementary teacher has to take coursework in inclusive education. Students are recommended for certificates in both general and special education.

Special education comes with a long list of rights that parents have, but are those rights reasonably available to everyone? Advocates hailed the 2017 Endrew F. v. Douglas County School Board U.S. Supreme Court ruling that established more-ambitious expectations for special education students. But it's important to note that the parents in that case-like most parents-lost at every step of the process: at the administrative judge level, at the district court level, and at the appeals court level before prevailing at the high court. They had resources to carry on the fight that few parents possess. Schools and districts are afraid of lawsuits, even though they win the vast majority of them. But parents also have fears that their children are not getting the appropriate education to which they are entitled.

In the vast majority of cases, parents are not unreasonable, nor are special educators lazy. Everyone is working hard, and in good faith. But the landscape in 2018 is far different from the educational landscape in 1975.

The IDEA made a fundamental change in access to education for students with disabilities. Now it's time to make that access meaningful.

Disability civil rights pioneer Judith Heumann has been at the forefront of trailblazing legislation to support people with disabilities, including Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, first passed in 1975, and the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act. A former assistant secretary of education for special education and rehabilitative services, Heumann says the future of this country relies on valuing every child and adult.
PERSPECTIVE

Q&A: How to Expand Special Education Services

What will it take for the nation to have an "aha" moment about the state of special education?

The nation needs to recognize that education for all will not occur with a one-size-fits-all model. To get there, we must train all administrators and all teachers to teach all children. We must educate the average American that our ability to be competitive in the global economy rests on having a highly educated workforce, and we cannot afford to believe that any one group of children cannot benefit from a robust educational system. And finally, special education should not be seen as a place but rather a service.

How would you ensure that teachers have the training and support they need to be effective?

The U.S. Department of Education and state education departments need to ensure that appropriate standards (with accountability measures) are developed and implemented. States need to support teacher-preparation colleges that offer dual-licensure, that are taught by faculty who have successfully worked in inclusive classrooms, and offer meaningful clinical programs. Future educators should learn principles of universal design for learning, differentiated instruction, and co-teaching. Funding should come from the federal and state governments. Scholarships should be more available so that students are not fearful of debt that they will not be able to pay back. Additionally, one would know that the teacher programs are effective when administrators are satisfied with the people they are hiring and graduates feel they have the knowledge and confidence to work in diverse classrooms.

What are the federal, state, and local levers you would pull to effectively educate students with disabilities?

Quality education ensures a strong democracy. In our schools every day, we understand that students' lives are impacted not only by what is happening in the classroom, but by poverty, health care, safety, employment, and housing, for example.

We must develop high standards for administrator and teacher licensure, provide sufficient funding to support our schools, and provide grants and loan forgiveness for educators. We must work with local, state, and national businesses to understand the future of work and the kind of learning that must be going on in our schools every day.

We cannot afford to squander one child's life. Our efforts will be measured by reduced dropout rates, significant reduction of juveniles entering our prison systems, and ultimately producing a society where we have demonstrated the value of diversity in our communities. This means that no child or adult should be devalued because of disability or any other marginalizing label.

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Editor's Note: Associate Editor Christina Samuels covers special education. This analysis is part of a special report exploring pressing trends in education. Read the full report: 10 Big Ideas in Education. The year was 1975, and President Gerald Ford was ambivalent about the law he was about to sign, guaranteeing that students with disabilities are entitled to education in the public schools.

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Administrative Federal Law

Summary

Link

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State Board of Education

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State Statutory Law

Summary

In the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 20 U.S.C. § 1400, students will not be diminished of their rights to be a part of society.

Special education students will receive equal opportunities as other students in the school district and class.

Undiagnosed students with a disability prevent a successful education

Link
20 U.S. Code § 1400 - Short title; findings; purposes | U.S. Code | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute (cornell.edu)
Citation
Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, 20 U.S.C. § 1400

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20 U.S. Code § 1400 - Short title; findings; purposes

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Judicial Federal Law

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Conway.pdf (uci.edu)
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State Constitutional Law

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Slide #10: Local Administrative Law/Policy/Rule

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Slide #10: Local Administrative Law/Policy/Rule

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Brackett ISD

Summary

Link
https://4.files.edl.io/46a1/08/19/21/154050-06464c7b-82f0-4dfa-91ef-0bffbdec0d07.pdf

Citation
Brackett Independent School District. (2020-2021). Employee Handbook. Equal Education Opportunities.

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Reference/Citation

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Slide #12: Personal Connection to the Legal and Ethical Standards

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Slide #12: Personal Connection to the Legal and Ethical Standards

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My first year of teaching I knew the minimum of Special Education. There was one student that was mentioned to the office but was not enough evidence.

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Slide #13: Bulleted list of Recommendations / Best Practices for Compliance

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Slide #13: Bulleted list of Recommendations / Best Practices for Compliance