Special Education Today newsletter 4(37)

Your update for the week that began 24 February 2025

Hello, dear readers. wherever you are. I hope that your troubles are few.¹

I know that times have been tough recently (and not just in the US), with education seeming to suffer not only its usual beatings, but special education being offered the short and excrement-covered end of the stick, as usual. As you read this issue of Special Education Today, you’ll see vague and obvious references to the troubles we collectively face.

Let me lead (lede?) with an historical reference. In 2022 I published the 36th newsletter of the first year of SET.² Here’s how I started that 2022 version:³

Dear dear readers,

Here you have the weak weekly newsletter for Special Education Today. If you found this in your inbox somewhat unexpectedly, perhaps because someone forwarded it to you, please click the button at the end of this paragraph to start your own free e-mail subscription. If you no longer want to get the newsletters—and, oh how I hope you still want to receive them—you will find an “unsubscribe” link at the end.

Let me twist these two threads together, as the provide context. Our shared interest in education for students with disabilities and recent news-events lead to this week’s content.

The structure of the newsletter (frivolous personal observations + SET status + ToC + ramblings) will be familiar to regular readers. It’s the variation in those features that probably will be of interest to you.

Photo

Spring is a reason for hope, verdad? My maternal grandmother reported regularly (in the days of handwritten letters) about the events in her garden. She celebrated the appearance of Virginia spring ephemerals

Here’s a brief video I took one day this week during a walk in my neighborhood. The lawn of a house in our areas has harbored crocus for so long that it is nearly covered with them. Here’s a little close up—for we young lovers—of crocus in the windy conditions where I found them.

I hope they are harbingers of hope.

Status

SET has continued to grow recently. We number greater than 800 subscribers and greater than 1000 followers. Over the week, there were greater than 5000 views of SET content, with about 10% coming from social media, Internet searches, and such. That compares with about 1000 views for the week of February 2022 (see previously linked newsletter) when there were about 360 subscribers.

Thank you to all who are subscribers for helping to make SET grow. Your share, forwards, and discussions have surely contributed to the increases in readership and subscriptions. Please continue!

Special thanks for Susan O., Janine L., and Special Ed Act for becoming supporters. Y’all joined with the long-time supporters—they know who they are!—who are the folks who make it possible for SET to offer free subs to lots of other people, including teachers, parents, and others from around Earth who may not have the privileges that people like me have. Paying subscribers are “the bees’ knees.”

Also, here’s a warm welcome to Pilgrim’s P., Karen P., Kale, Kim OC, Dirbi,⁴ [anonymous], Richard Z., Ashley N., Hatter, Tracey B., ladyluck, and Renae for subscribing this past week.

Thanks to the many readers who dropped “likes” on posts. Here’s even more appreciation for those who commented or restacked posts: Dan H., Sandra D., Paul C., Tom Z., and Tracey B. It is wonderful to be on this rollercoaster with you!

Last week’s droppings

I’ve been finding it har dot keep up these days. There are so many posts that I’d like to write, but potential posts keep popping into my working space…my inadequate working memory, I guess folks would say.

Well, hello, dear readers, wherever you are. Here’s what you might have missed last week:

1. Special Education Today newsletter 4(35): What happened with SET during the week of 17 February 2025?

2. What followers have seen lately: What's the difference between "subscribing" and "following?"

3. Flash back to cooking: How did I use cooking as a metaphor for teaching?

4. Judy Woodruff reported about risks to special ed services: What did the the sage Ms. Woodruff find when investigating contemporary debates about special education?

5. Another DI podcast: special education: Do you need a serious set of resources about Direct Instruction?

6. L. McMahon's nomination advanced: What's the future of special education under Ms. McMahon's leadership of the US Education Department? [For paying subscibers]

7. D. Carnine on guiding education with evidence: What does the sage professor have to say about cracking that nut?

8. International Wheelchair Day is today: What's happening with wheels on Earth?

Read ‘em before they disappear behind the paywall!

Notes & comments

The recent discussions about US news events related to special education, some of which have been the subject of posts here on SET, have prompted me to think. Yikes! John’s thinking! Danger! Run away!

That my thinking should raise red flags is readily understandable. You surely do want to know what I’m thinking about breathing, eating, bathing, and similar activities of daily living. I shan’t subject you to those thoughts.

But, I would like to expose you [ahem] to at least one idea that I’ve been thinking about. Given all the discussion about education in the US, I wanted to think about the effects of reforms. I wanted to acknowledge alarms and doomsday prognostications, but to ask a slightly higher-order question, one that “steps back,” one that addresses a “big picture” concern.

Suppose that some specific, major reform came to pass. These days, US citizens might think right away of eliminating the Education Department of the government as an example of such a reform. That’s a good one. Other reforms might be

• Reducing government financial support for special education

• Promoting certain teaching methods (whether progressivist or instructivist)

• Endorsing pathways to trade schools for kids with disabilities

Regardless of the reforms, how would we know whether those reforms were beneficial for our kids? Not just whether the reforms “worked,” but did our kids (and their families) benefit? What evidence would it take to convince us that the reforms were good? To be sure, one aspect of the evidence would be how we “feel” about them (survey using a scale: Hate, Dislike, Like, Love), but what about more objective measures? Does “graduation rates” capture the important outcomes? Is being invited to the prom the right metric?

By raising this issue, I don’t have hopes that we can solve it in the few minutes that it takes to read this post. I simply want to remind my self that we need to understand how we will know the consequences (positive and negative) of reforms. I fear I too often have knee-jerk reactions to proposals. If we are looking out for kids with disabilities, I think we need to be calmly, rationally, and clearly focused on outcomes.

So, let me leave young lovers of kids with disabilities with this thought: How would we know that we are teaching our kids well?

Oh, shoot. Let’s just go with it, right?

Watch out for yourselves and your family and neighbors. Wear your seatbelts and encourage others to do so, too. Eat healthily.⁵ Don’t stomp on the crocus. And, use evidence-based practices in your teaching.

Peace & love, young lovers of kids with disabilities,

JohnL

John Wills Lloyd, Ph.D.

UVA Professor Emeritus

Founder & Editor, https://www.SpecialEducationToday.com/

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SET should not be confused with a product that uses the same name and is published by the Council for Exceptional Children. SET predated CEC’s publication by decades. Despite my appreciation for CEC, this product is not designed to promote that organization nor should the views expressed here be considered to represent the views or policies of that organization.

Footnote

1. As I wrote those first two sentences, I remembered a song from a stage and screen musical from my childhood. The song, “Hello, Young Lovers,” by Oscar Hammerstein II and Richard Rodgers, who are usually known by their last names in reverse order: Rodgers and Hammerstein. The song comes from the productions called “The King and I,” which have all the costuming and orchestration one would ever need in theater. After a couple of introductory words, the lyric goes like this:
Hello young lovers,
Whoever you are,
I hope your troubles are few.
All my good wishes go with you tonight,
I've been in love like you.

2. For those who count, that’s about 150 newsletters ago. All readers can read all those newsletters (provided I’ve managed the Substack settings properly). If you want to read more than the newsletters in the archives, please start a paid subscription…find the button in this post or do your own research to accomplish that.

3. The link points to the actual issue for 21 February 2022. It’s in the “wild” (not behind the pay wall) so anyone can read it.

4. Hey, I see you subscribing from a second address!

5. Don’t eat like me! I shouldn’t consider coffee and cookies a good breakfast. (I can see Dan H. over there gagging…doesn’t even need a spoon after this description of my diet.)