Special Education Today newsletter 4(5)

If you'd read all the messages from the week of 22 July 2024, would any of this content be news?

Say hey! Welcome to this week’s edition of the newsletter for Special Eduction Today. This is the 996th post in the life of SET. This week, if I can generate enough new content, SET will make it past 1000!

I was thinking of creating a “word cloud”—you know, those graphics that represent the frequency words by printing words used more often in larger type font—for SET, but I got to thinking about it and I felt intimidated. Would I have to go back through 990+ posts, extracting the text from each and making a huge document by pasting those clippings of text into one source? Ugh.¹

Anyway, here’s the newsletter for this week. Yes, it has pretty familiar contents.

Photo

Ahh, the Piedmont of the mid-Atlantic in the summer. The plant growth has pretty much taken over any places where it hasn’t been constrained or cut. The vegetation grows so quickly and extensively in the spring and, by mid summer, it freakin’ owns the place.

So, Pat and I were a bit surprised to see that there was a new (to us) path cut through some of the growth near where we walk beside the Rivanna River just a couple of miles from our home. Look here! Someone with some tools and plenty of time seems to have started a new place to walk. It doesn’t appear to be open just yet, but when I get a chance, I’ll follow it. Mayhaps I’ll also contact the local Parks and Recreation office to see what they plans are for it. I could put in $0.02 about accessibility while I’m asking, don’t you think?

A path yet untaken; it’s got to have wonder as its destination. Photo 2024 by John Wills Lloyd, Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Status report

As already noted, this post gets the SET total close to 1000. Please stay tuned to see the way-dull fireworks show when we pass that milestone.

SET’s subscriber base has continued to grow. The total number of subscribers has grown by about 2 every 3 days in the last month—and this is the summer doldrums. Since it’s inception three plus years ago, SET has grown from essentially zero (well, TBH, I was there in the beginning…so, one) to greater than 700.

I am especially happy to report that paying subscriptions have increased, too. Let me acknowledge a few more of those who are helping to sustain SET (trying not to duplicate those whom I mention previously): Brian G-M., Larry M., Edwin M., Judy V., Luann D., Michele M., Pam S., Pei H. Michael K., Bryan W., Jean C., Jim K., Jane B., Linda L. and Angelique W. Y’all rock! And, I extend again a special thanks to Mike G., Kathy M., and Li-Yu H. (who I hope is safe after the typhoon passed over Taipei earlier this week).

Contents

• Special Education Today newsletter 4(4): Did you miss anything from SET the week of 15 July 2024?

• Another view on Project 2025: What does the Hechinger Report say about the proposal for governance in a new US Republican administration?

• Illinois conference on behavior issues: Isn't this a great opportunity?

• J. Lee Wiederholt 1942-2007: Lee substantially influenced assessment and research on learning disabilities

Notes and comments

Although I suspect many readers know that SET is a rebirth of a product that Jim Kauffman, Dan Hallahan, and I created in the 1980s, I want to reiterate that for folks who may have subscribed too recently or whom may have simply forgotten. I mentioned the relationship between this version of SET and it paper predecessor in “SET & spedtalk,” which was the first post in the new incarnation. That post even included a scan of front page of the first issue of the newsletter from 1984.²

I bring this up for two reasons. First, I’m toying with extracting columns that appeared in those 40-year-old issues. Tom Lovitt and Barbara Bateman were regular contributors to the paper newsletter; I thought it might be fun to revisit what they wrote “back in the day.” What do you (paying subscribers) think?

Second, I want to use this recollection to reiterate that SET is different from other publications that use the name, “Special Education Today.” For example, the Council for Exceptional Children publishes a newsletter by this name; it provides content relevant to its members (e.g., news snippets, links to articles in its journals, advertising from its partners, and so forth), but there is no affiliation with the SET that I publish here at https://www.specialeducationtoday.com/. Out in the wilds of the intertubes, one can also find multiple instances of “Special Education Today in [geographic region],” too. The SET that you’re reading here is not affiliated with any of those either. Anyway, please don’t confuse SET with any of these other publications.

OK, as Porky Pig used to say (and I guess he still does say) at the end of Looney Tunes animations, “That’s all folks.” I hope that Mr. Pig received effective speech therapy and can now say that with no disfluencies…and I hope that every one of SET’s readers stays safe, remembers to be considerate of others, and teaches their children well.

JohnL

John Wills Lloyd, Ph.D.

UVA Professor Emeritus

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

Footnotes

1. If any reader has (a) the skills to make this easier and (b) the inclination to help me with the task, please contact me!

2. Some old timers among the readership here may remember that the first official issue was preceded by an “inaugural issue” that was, essentially, an advertisement for the newsletter.