Special Education Today Newsletter 4(2)
What was happening (at least at SET) the first week of July 2024?
Welcome to the weekly update for 8 July 2024 from Special Education Today. Even though it’s a great time in the northern hemisphere to take a summer vacation, Earth keeps spinning along and things continue to happen here on SET.
Photo for this week
In the mudroom of our house, we keep a basket of toys for our two cats. Sometimes, one or the other of the cats will extract a toy and begin to play with it. A few days ago, instead of getting one toy, our cat Bill (no known relation to Berkeley Breathed’s Bill D. Cat) knocked over the entire basket and removed several toys. Pat surmised that Bill was searching for a cat treat that had fallen to the bottom of the basket.
No additional comments from me. Help yourselves by providing questions or answers in the Quip Section at the end of the post.
The situation
It’s been a quiet week at Lake SET, where all the cats are smart and good looking…at least the felines, are. There were a few posts (I’ll list them in the next section) but pretty few comments and likes. The site took only a few more than 1000 visits. These outcomes are likely the result of me sending notices about only (maybe) two of the posts. The others all went directly to the Web with no e-mail announcements. But thanks to all y’all who did check in over the past seven days, especially those who interacted with the content (Anne, Joel M., CoreyJo, and anyone whom I missed).
The quasi ToC
Here’s the catalog of those four posts I mentioned in the previous paragraph.
Special Education Today newsletter 4(1): What has happened on SET in late June 2024?
Function-based interventions for LD?: Are there worthwhile applications of FBA for academic problems?
Musings: Teaching for Independence Day: Would anyone be irritated if I hijack the term "independence" today on the 4th of July?
Retro SET: The BM series: What posts appeared in the SET series about behavior management?
Even though none of the posts may come from your muse, please muse on them and maybe even take a tad of amusement from one or more of them.
Notes & comment
The Heritage Foundation, a US group that has a “mission … to formulate and promote public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense” published a document frequently called “Project 2025” that it identified as an effort to “lay the groundwork for a White House more friendly to the right. For decades, as the left has continued its march through America’s institutions, conservatives have been outgunned and outmatched when it comes to the art of government.”
Project 2025 is the brief name for Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise, what one might call a rough blueprint for policies that a new presidential administration might implement. The full document is quite long (~900 pages), but I had a chance to review the section—Chapter 12—by Lindsey M. Burke devoted to the US Department of Education. Here is the opening of chapter:
Federal education policy should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Depart- ment of Education should be eliminated. When power is exercised, it should empower students and families, not government. In our pluralistic society, fami- lies and students should be free to choose from a diverse set of school options and learning environments that best fit their needs. Our postsecondary institutions should also reflect such diversity, with room for not only “traditional” liberal arts colleges and research universities but also faith-based institutions, career schools, military academies, and lifelong learning programs.
One may agree or disagree with this general view of education. Of course, readers of SET will want to know what in the document is relevant to special education. I provide extended quotations about special education, disabilities, and IDEA here. I’ve inserted my own headings here to structure the recounting of the content.
What happens to OSERS?
If the Department of Education is to be abolished, where will its functions go? Here’s an extended quotation from page 326-327 (emphasis was in the original):
Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS)
The Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) houses nearly two dozen programs, ranging from funding for the Individuals with Dis- abilities Education Act (IDEA) and the National Technical Institute for the Deaf to Special Olympics Funding and the American Printing House for the Blind.
Most IDEA funding should be converted into a no-strings formula block grant targeted at students with disabilities and distributed directly to local education agencies by Health and Human Service’s Administration for Community Living.
Transfer the Vocational Rehabilitation Grants for Native American students to the Bureau of Indian Education.
Phase out earmarks for a variety of special institutions, as originally envisioned.
To the extent that OSERS supports federal efforts to enforce our laws against discrimination of individuals with disabilities, those assets should be moved to the Department of Justice (DOJ) along with the Office for Civil Rights (OCR).
Other recommendations relevant to special education include rescinding regulations from 2017 "under Part B of IDEA that require states to consider race and ethnicity in identification, placement, and discipline of students with disabilities” (p. 336).
What about funding for kids with disabilities?
One part of the proposed reform is to support parents’ pursuit of IDEA FAPE when state and local agencies efforts are inadequate (bold text was emphasized in the original).
Expand Education Choice Through Portability of Existing Federal Funds
Setting education policy on the right track long term would require sunsetting the U.S. Department of Education altogether. Doing so would not result in fewer resources and less assistance for children with special needs or from low-income families. Rather, closing the federal behemoth would better target existing taxpayer resources already set aside for these students by shifting oversight responsibilities to federal and state agencies that have more expertise in helping these populations.
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is the federal law gov- erning taxpayer spending on K–12 students with special needs. The law stipulates that students have a right to a “free and appropriate education,” and 95 percent of children with special needs attend assigned public schools. The education is not always appropriate, however: Special education is fraught with legal battles. Some argue that the education of children with special needs is the most litigated area of K–12 education. Thus, despite a nearly 50-year-old federal law that sees regular revision and reauthorization and approximately $13.5 billion per year in federal taxpayer spending, parents still struggle to establish intervention plans for their students with public school district officials regarding the physical and educational requirements for their children with special needs.
State-level education options often exclusively serve children with special needs for these very reasons. Florida, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Mississippi, South Carolina, and North Carolina, to name a few states, all have education savings accounts or K–12 private school scholarship options for children with special needs.
would give the families of children with special needs approximately $1,800 per child to help meet a child’s unique learning needs.
Federal lawmakers should move IDEA oversight and implementation to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Officials should then consider revising IDEA to require that a child’s portion of the federal taxpayer spending under the law be made available to families so parents can choose how and where a child learns.
IDEA already allows families to choose a private school under certain conditions, but federal officials should update the law so that families can use their child’s IDEA spending for textbooks, education therapies, personal tutors, and other learning expenses, similar to the way in which parents use education savings accounts in states such as Arizona and Florida. These micro-education savings accounts would give the families of children with special needs approximately $1,800 per child to help meet a child’s unique learning needs.
It would be a mistake to presume that these changes are the sum total of what a new US administration would promulgate or that a new administration would adopt all these recommendations. I take these recommendations as the ideas of some people who are hoping to affect future policies, procedures, and practices, and that the recommendations are subject to revision.
Still, I think the excepts here provide some strong hints about what might lie ahead for special education. Reasonable people will have questions, I think. For example, with some key functions (e.g., oversight of civil rights protections) moved to other cabinet-level departments and the Department of Education abolished, what will become of the other function of OSERS and OSEP? Presumably, moving to block funding for states will require passing along responsibility not just for the funds but also for other aspects of special education. What would be passed along and what would simply be eliminated? What does Project 2025 imply about the vision for special education in the US?
Readers almost surely have sage answers to these questions. And, they may have sage questions, too. Let’s discuss!