Special Education Today newsletter 4(9)

What went down on SET the week of 19 August 2024?

Hola y buenos dias! Welcome to this week’s edition of the newsletter for Special Education Today. Let’s get right to it.

Photo

This poor shoe is stuck without its child. It’s just waiting patiently atop the post and rail at the head of a path. Will they ever be reunited?

I spotted the shoe as Pat and I began a walk along the Rivanna Trail. I suppose some other kind visitor had found it and placed in this pretty obvious place, thinking that the child—more likely the child’s parent—would come back to look for it. But I couldn’t help but think about the poor piece of footwear being estranged from its little person.

This one looks to be for a left foot. Did the other shoe drop nearby somewhere? Did it get to ride home alone with the child and an adult? Will left and right ever come together again?

A shoe at the entrance to a trail. Photo by John Wills Lloyd, Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Status

Last week, I indicated that subscription data have been flat. Here’s the quote:

To say that SET is hemorrhaging subscribers would be too strong a statement. Suffice it to say that we’re not growing. For those who are accustomed to looking at graphs from single-subject studies: There’s no increasing trend in the subscription data. Sigh.

That’s actually not true. Well, it is and it isn’t. It’s pretty much true for the paid subscriptions. They’re pretty flat, even in the context of a paid subscription being on sale all month. However, the overall subscription rate has been increasing.

The left end at late May is at about 625 and the right at late August is about 725. So, that’s about 100 new free subscribers over the summer…maybe one per day. So, thanks to all y’all who are sharing copies of the posts, talking about SET in your classes, telling your family, friends, and colleagues about it. And a special shoutout to Dan H., Luann L. D., Tom Z., Jane B., Tina C. and Clay K. for dropping comments during the previous week.¹ Thank you!

A little foreshadowing: I’ll be announcing the “winner” of the contest announced last May: “First annual SET reader award.” Ed M. and I have been corresponding about the prize for the winner, which will be an autographed copy of his book, Breakthrough: Federal Special Education Legislation 1965-1981. (If you want to get your own copy of Ed’s book, here’s a link to the Bookshop page about it.² )

Weekly readings

Here’s the customary list of posts from the past week. If you're a paid subscriber, you can read them now and come back to them. If you’re a free subscriber, you’ll need to read this soon before they go behind the pay wall.

1. Special Education Today newsletter 4(8): What's the haps in SET over the week beginning 12 August 2024?

2. Multiple countries' perspectives on inclusion: How is “inclusive education” viewed in different countries?

3. Mastery = accuracy + speed: What did Carl Binder, Elizabeth Houghton, & Barbara Bateman have to say about 'fluency?' [Paywall]

4. Merit Pay and Teacher Evaluations: What did Tom Lovitt have to say about merit pay in January 1984?

5. A viral moment at the Democratic National Convention: What happens when someone with a disability shows emotion on live television?

6. Cover art invitation: What scholarly journal is seeking submissions of art for the covers of the journal?

Notes & comments

I recently have been thinking a bit about individualized education programs. Now, readers know that it is dangerous when I think.³ I’ll try to be cautious, but here are just some of the thoughts:

• When I see them, I often feel like we professors need to do a better job of teaching students how to write sensible IEPs, especially present levels of performance and goals and objectives. Should the PLoPs be composed of 3 out of 4 or 5 out of 6 sentences devoted to explaining the features of the instruments used in assessments or to the structure of the curricula to be used, and only 1 of the sentences describing the results for a child? If I ran the zoo, I’d give everyone a copy of “From Gobbledygook to Clearly Written Annual IEP Goals” by Barbara D. Bateman.

• Suppose you learned that a local education agency was considering recommending a special (private) day school placement for a youngster because of behavior problems. What would you expect to see in the PLoPs and Gs&Os? I’d guess that the PLoP ought to include some pretty damn serious data from a functional behavior assessment, even a functional analysis, no? How about another run-the-zoo recommendation: John Umbreit, Jolenea Ferro, Kathleen Lane, and Carl Liaupsin’s Functional Assessment-Based Intervention: Effective Individualized Supports for Students.

• I wonder about the qualities of IEPs in the broad perspective. What are they like across the US, for example? I know some scholars have been examining this matter (e.g., Burke et al., 20-24; Hott et al., 2021; McKenna et al., 2024), and I hope that those readers who actually write IEPs and those who teach about writing them can use those examinations to help improve the quality of everyday IEPs.

IEPs are, it seems to me, central to the endeavor of providing a free and appropriate public education. End or rant.

Well, not quire…rant mode back on: Take care of yourselves, dear readers, and take care of those whom you work, live, and hang. And, of course, teach your students well about lots of things, including IEPs.

Rant back off,

JohnL

John Wills Lloyd, Ph.D.

UVA Professor Emeritus

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

References

Burke, K. M., Kurth, J. A., Shogren, K. A., Hagiwara, M., Raley, S. K., & Ruppar, A. L. (2024). Instructional content and self-determination in individualized education program annual goals for students with extensive support needs. Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, 62(1), 44-58. https://doi.org/10.1352/1934-9556-62.1.44

Hott, B. L., Jones, B. A., Randolph, K. M., Kuntz, E., McKenna, J. W., & Brigham, F. J. (2021). Lessons learned from a descriptive review of rural individualized education programs. The Journal of Special Education, 55(3), 163-173. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022466920972670

McKenna, J. W., Solis, M., Garwood, J., & Parenti, M. (2024). Characteristics of individualized education programs for students with learning disabilities: A systematic review. Learning Disability Quarterly, 47(3), 194-207. https://doi.org/10.1177/07319487231182697

Footnotes

1. As I understand (I could be mistaken), search engines count comments as an indicator of popularity and they use popularity as a factor in determining evaluating the importance (and hence ranking?) of sites.

2. I’m referring readers to the item on Bookshop.org because I think it’s much nicer for our world if local booksellers get the business than if we buy through some ginormous multi-national company. And, just in case you’re wondering, I don’t get a kick back from Ed or the book seller, but a bookstore local that you can choose does get a cut for every sale on Bookshop.org.

3. I am reminded of the quotation attributed to one of the greatest hitters in the history of professional baseball, Ted Williams: “If you don’t think too good, don’t think too much.”