Special Education Today newsletter 5(6)

What? Aren't we rolling again this year?

Dear Dear Readers,

Here we go again! It’s the two-hundred-somthingth newsletter¹ for Special Education Today. This one covers the week that began 4 August 2025 and it is the 1380th publication for SET. There are probably scant few of you, Dear Readers, who can honestly claim to have read (or at least seen) each and every one. of them, but those of you who have paid subscriptions can peruse them all in the archives (and, actually, those DRs who have have any kind of subscription can skim through the archives and see the titles, subtitles, and dates for them).

Although you may already realize this, let me must say that you’ll find the previous issues of the newsletter in the archives. What is more, you’ll see that most of them have a gratuitous photo, some notes about the status of SET, a section cataloging the posts from the previous week, and an editorial. Surprise! This one has that same structure!

Photo

One evening 20 years ago, I looked out the front door of our Tom Mountain house and in the driveway I saw a doe walk past my old Thunderbird which was (then only a few years old). From the doe’s path, I infer that it more interested in eating some of Pat’s garden plants than in admiring the car.

I don’t know what became of that doe, but I still have the car. The short version of a long story is that I inherited the car from my high school art teacher. If we are ever in an appropriate place and have the time, you can ask me for the longer version of that story.

Update

Just a few notes in this section for this week.

I have a shout-out for California, New York, Oregon, South Carolina, and Virginia for having the highest percentages of paid US subscribers to SET. It’s great to recognize Chile, India, Portugal, Taiwan, and the US for having the highest percentages of paid subscriptions internationally.

Thanks to Fang X. and Dan H. who were the only readers who left comments this past week. Flash of the electrons to Jules T. who restacked a post.

Thanks, too, to the following folks who have been sharing SET with others:. Kristen McM., Betsy T., Jan H., Jennifer K., and Cheryl Z.

It was nice to have a couple of telephone (old technology!) conversations with readers Mike N.,² Jean S., and Callie O. The talks ranged over many topics (these poor Dear Readers had to listen to me drone on and on). But, I appreciate y’all listening!

List of posts

I’m still not settled on what to call this section. I think “posts list” is kinda cute, but I fear that it may miscommunicate. As some DRs will remember, I mislabeled it a “table of contents” for many weeks over the years. Suggestions?.

I’ve included the initials of SET contributors after the posts. This week there are posts by Mitchell Yell, David Bateman, and me.³

1. Special Education Today newsletter 5(5): Do you want to look away from a review of last week's SET notes?

2. Strike two: Bateman's legal corner: What was Barbara Bateman saying about the Tommy S. case in the original SET of 1985? [MY, DB, & JWL]

3. DI as experienced by gen ed learners: Isn't Direct Instruction really just for the slow kids?

4. Reprint: Students don't have disabilities: Hunh? What?

5. Call for research about artificial intelligence: Who has data about the influence of AI for our kids?

6. Juli Taylor returns to US ED: "This is a breaking news event; please stay tuned...UPDATED"

7. Support evidence-based education in Australia: Isn't it a good idea?

8. Something about parenting: What's it like to have a disability as a parent?

If you missed any one of these, take advantage of the current situation and read them for free. If you want to be able to return to them any time later, please become a paying subscriber and ensure your access to all the posts in the archives.

Commentary

Probably most DRs are too young to remember the following lyric, but I do. I was in junior high school when the song by Lonnie Donegan⁴ of the UK crossed the Atlantic and. became a hit in the early 1960s. Wikipedia called it a “novelty song,” which is probably about right.

Regardless of all that, this is the lyric for the chorus I want to show you, though. ⁵

Does your chewing gum lose its flavour
On the bedpost overnight
If your mother says don't chew it
Do you swallow it in spite
Can you catch it on your tonsils
Can you heave it left and right
Does your chewing gum lose its flavour
On the bedpost overnight

The reason I’ve gone through all this rigamarole is that I’ve been stuck on the question “Do you swallow it in spite?” It seems to me that some of our colleagues swallow their gun in spite of evidence about…well, evidence based practices. When they learn that some buzz method that they favor is as naked as the emperor in his new clothes, they refuse to accept the facts and double their employment of the ineffective practice.

They may say, “Well, there are lots of factors that affect [reading development] and that’s not going to overcome them all.” They may deflect reform by arguing, “Well, that’s all well and good, but it disrespects the experience of teachers, and we believe in teachers…academic freedom, you know.” “Well, that’s all well and good for your special ed kids, but we’re concerned about all these other kids.” Or, “You can’t just blow in here with your high-faulting, ivory-tower ideas and expect us to go for that BS. We already use best practices.”

I distinctly remember one experienced teacher at an in-service I did in the suburbs west of Chicago in about 1977 who dramatically folded her arms across her chest and said, “I’ve been teaching reading this way for more than 30 years and I’m not going to change now.”⁶

Lots of people have thought about the problem of resistance to adoption of evidence-based practices, procedures, methods, curricula, and etc. Here are just a few connections for us to contemplate:

1. Our esteemed colleague, Doug Carnine,⁷ wrote about this problem on a couple of occasions. In 1997 he published a paper called “Response Bridging the Research-to0-Practice Gap” in Exceptional Children, another entitled “Campaigns for Moving Research Into Practice”⁸ in Remedial and Special Education, and yet another in 2000 entitled “Why Education Experts Resist Effective Practices (And What It Would Take To Make Education More Like Medicine).”

2. Over on The Science of Learning, Jim Hewitt and Nidhi Sachedeva published (8 July 2025) “Beyond belief: Reframing teaching as a science-based profession: Some reflections on Douglas Carnine's classic article, "Why Education Experts Resist Effective Practices.”",”⁹ in which they discussed topics connected to how educators seem to swallow their gum. As their title indicates, they are taking off on Doug’s arguments. They provided worthy analyses and suggestions about overcoming the problem. It’s worth a read!

3. In a snazzy 2019 publication from RTI International¹⁰ Lissette M. Saavedra, Antonio A. Morgan-Lopez, Anna C. Yaros, Alex Buben, and James V. Trudeau examined “Provider Resistance to Evidence-Based Practice in Schools: Why It Happens and How to Plan for It in Evaluations” (also available from the National Library of Medicine).

You might not be surprised that scholars such as Bryan Cook. the late Ronnie Detrich, Sam Odom, and others have examined the problems of implementing evidence-based practices. They have made valuable suggestions. I would like to encourage DRs to review their work and engage in a discussion here on SET. Just, please, don’t don’t fold your arms defiantly and swallow your gum in spite.

Also, in the meantime, please take care of yourselves. Stay out of the range of gunfire, eat well (I mean healthily), exercise, wear your seatbelts, get lots of rest, and enjoy life. Also, hang with some pals and take care of each other. Thank a colleague and, of course, teach our children well.

JohnL

John Wills Lloyd, Ph.D.

UVA Professor Emeritus
Founder & Editor, https://www.SpecialEducationToday.com/

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.

Footnotes

1. We ought to be able to figure this out arithmetically, right? There have been newsletters pretty much every week and they’ve been appearing since…uhm, 2021? Oh, damn, there’s too much slippage in “every week” and “since.” forget mathematically deducing the number. We’ll have to resort to counting one-by-one…so boring!

2. I don’t want to count the chick before it’s hatched, but Mike N., other members of the SET community, and I will have a new publication to announce here soon. Stay tuned. (While I’m on the topic of published papers, I have a couple of others in the works and look forward to being able to announce them, too.)

3. Although she didn’t author an SET post this week, Li-Yu Hung has launched her own ‘stack, too. Visit her profile.

4. I’ve read reports (e.g., “The Life and Legacy of Lonnie Donegan: The King of Skiffle”) that Lonnie Donegan was admired by John Lennon. Wikipedia said that Mr. Donegan’s version was apparently a cover of a much older song written by Billy Rose, Ernest Breuer, and Marty Bloom and released in 1924.

5. If you need to listen, here’s a link to an audio version.

6. In Ms. X’s defense, if you saw a picture of me at that time (in my 20s, scraggily beard, ill-kempt hair), you might forgive her. When I related this experience to Barb Bateman not long after it occurred, she did a wonderfully accurate imitation of the teacher and told me, “I’ve gotten that, too.”

7. Disclosure: Doug and I collaborated during the 1990s to promote evidence based practices. I did not and do not receive any compensation from that work.

8. Long-time readers of SET, Ed P., was the editor of RaSE at the time this Carnine paper appeared. Thanks, Ed!

9. Wow! That’s a lot of punctuation packed together closely there. Does it look okay to y’all?

10. Note that the “RTI” in RTI International refers to “Research Triangle Institute,” not to the acronym for “response to intervention” that many readers may recognize more readily.