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NRCLD Information Digest #1

Presidential Commission on Excellence in Special Education Report: "A New Era: Revitalizing Special Education for Children and Their Families"

On October 2, 2001, President George W. Bush created the Commission on Excellence in Special Education to recommend reforms and move federal, state, and local special education programs from a "culture of compliance" to a "culture of accountability."

Cited for the need was the fact that 5 million children in special education have been identified as having specific learning disabilities, a growth of more than 300 percent since 1976. Of those in this group, 80 percent became special education students because they never learned how to read.

Officially launched in January 2002, the 24-member Commission had six months to gather information through task forces, hearings, and meetings around the country. The Commission also invited written input, completed site visits, and reviewed studies and reports.

After receiving thousands of comments and listening to more than a hundred experts, the Commission released a report, A New Era: Revitalizing Special Education for Children and Their Families on July 1, 2002. Addressing federal requirements, special education finance, accountability, transition and post-secondary outcomes, assessment and identification, professional development, and education research and dissemination, these common threads emerged:

• When children don't progress in special education, parents have few options.
• Litigation pressures have diverted school energy from education.
• Current methods of special education identification lack validity causing misidentification.
• Teachers need better preparation, support, and professional development.
• Special education research needs more rigor, long-term coordination, and use in the schools.
• Too many students in special education fail to graduate from high school and successfully complete transition plans.

Based on three additional findings -- process has been emphasized more than results, the present system requires academic failure to get services, and general education and special education are viewed as separate programs -- the Commission made three broad recommendations.

• Focus on results, not process.
• Strive toward prevention rather than wait for failure.
• Consider children with disabilities as general education children first.

Recommendations Relating to the Learning Disabilities Field

Conditions covered by the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) were grouped into three major categories: sensory disabilities, physical and neurological disabilities, and developmental disabilities. Classified as a developmental disability, learning disability generated several specific recommendations, including early screening ("The Commission is further concerned about the ability of teachers to identify early those children who may be at risk of reading difficulties and those factors associated with potential learning problems, particularly in the early elementary grades where learning to read directly affects a child's future academic success"), prevention, and intervention.

The Commission also requested that current assessment methods of specific learning disability detection be amended to not require achievement tests and discrepancies. This move would eliminate IQ tests from the identification process except for individuals with possible mental retardation. Assessment processes based on response to intervention and progress monitoring were suggested by the Commission.

Because the Commission viewed reading as the most critical academic skill a child can learn, it recommended that general and special education teachers get more training in scientifically based assessment and intervention in readings. Their reading instruction should include "explicit and systematic instruction in phonemic awareness, decoding, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension."

In a typical preservice course of study, according to the report, little time is allocated to preparing teachers to teach reading. Almost every state does require course work in teaching reading, but statistics show that most teachers of the primary grades take only one course in reading instruction and its quality "is often questionable."