Assessing qualities of political statements about disability

Is there value in the analyses of a policy group's assessments?

Politician’s rhetoric surrounding disability sometimes seems disrespectful and unkind. As developed here on Special Education Today in “Public references to intelligence, IQ, and ID: Is the US president re-inventing the ‘R Word?,’ those actions are a matter of concern to many of us. Into that chasm between our world and the language used by politicians, there seems to be some nascent activity to examine what is happening.

Here’s a link to a group that seems to be reporting about US political leaders’s discussions about disability. Michael McCarthy published “Disability Discourse Matters Relaunches with Enhanced Dashboards, Smarter AI, and Expanded Capacity” on 3 November 2025. In the post, Mr. McCarthy explained that the DDM folks have developed a scoring system for assessing public officials’ statements about disabilities. They have, for example, found that statements by officials from the US White House and Cabinet rated a 2.8 of 4.0 on the DDM scale of the organization (see rubric). The post promises that scores about other government officials’ (e.g., US Senators’) statements are forthcoming.

AI-genertated checklist of language referring to disability; note that the terms a nonsense placeholders, of course.

I don’t know if that score is good or bad, because I don’t know the reliability and validity of the DDM instrument. The rubric seems to tap some important ideas (e.g., “Dehumanizing Rhetoric”), but ideas seem to be measured at the categorical level at best. As Jim K. and I argued (Kauffman & Lloyd, 2024), categorical measurement is open to many a slip ‘twixt cup and lip.

DDM is “an independent initiative of the Education Collaboratory at Yale University.” According to the Web presences for this group its purpose is as follows:

The mission of the Education Collaboratory at Yale is to advance the science of learning and social and emotional development. Our approach emphasizes community partnerships and collaborative engagements with schools and families, designed to balance rigor, relevance, and reality in inclusive classroom instruction, assessments, and implementation science.

Under the direction of Dr. Christina Cipriano, the Education Collaboratory at Yale is leading the national discourse to evolve the definition of evidence-based research, practice, and assessment in schools.

Let’s track how this initiative progresses. There are surely members of the Special Education Today community who have a better idea than I about what’s going on here. Please, if you’re one of them, chime in with comments!

Reference

Kauffman, J. M., & Lloyd, J. W. (2024). Statistics, data, and special educational decisions: Basic links to realities. In J. M. Kauffman, D. P. Hallahan, & P. C. Pullen (Eds.), Handbook of special education (3rd ed; pp. 81-98). Taylor & Francis.