Special Education Today newsletter 4(20)
The week’s news and info for the week beginning 4 November 2024
Welcome, everyone, to this edition of the Special Education Today newsletter. It’s the the 20th issue for the fourth year of the newsletter and, thinking about that issue number makes me think about how much of this year already seems to have past. The 20th issue of 50 for the year shows that 40% of the year is already gone.
Wow! Oh well. I guess there’s not much to do about the time gone by other than to keep on keeping on!
Speaking of keeping on, let me begin by advising you, dear readers, that the advance organizer for this issue shows pretty much the usual plan. You can expect (a) photo, (b) status, (c) table of contents (such as it is), and (d) commentary. Keeping on keeping on….
Video
Oh! Wait! It’s not a photo. It’s a video of a performance by The Include Choir, a group of singers from the Redhill area (south London, right?) of the UK. They’re singing a special arrangement of “We Are the World,” the hit song from 1985, written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie and produced by Michael Omartian and, especially the late Quincy Jones (usually listed ahead of anyone else in credits and deservedly honored as one of the greatest musicians of my listening times). The choir’s arrangement mixes in lyrics from John Lennon’s “Imagine.” Give a listen and find more on the Include Choir’s YouTube page.
I know there are lots of choirs and bands that include individuals with disabilities. I had the good fortune to witness a performance by a drumming group in Braga, PT, in July of 2014. The event was held in conjunction with a conference sponsored by the Division for International Special Education & Services. Please tell about groups or performances you know about in your neck of the woods.
Status updates
Thanks for reading the SET newsletter, all y’all. Probably some 500 folks will read this edition, and some of them will open it more than once, including opening it on different devices. Each time you open it, whether it’s just once or five times, I hope you think, “Ahh, I know someone who would benefit from or enjoy learning about SET and I'm going to share it with her.”
You may use this convenient button to share SET or simply copy the URL from the location bar and paste it into a message (text or email; either is OK). Just share away at will.
By sharing with others, you’ll be introducing them to the wonderful community of people who (like you) are also readers of SET. Some folks who joined that august bunch1 this past week are Laura M., Krysten W., and Heather Q. Also, “hey” to Marvin, Samo B., and other new followers, who may not actually read the newsletter unless they make a special visit to the site. Oh, and thanks, too, for visiting the Web site for SET as shown here…how many times can I link to it?
It’s great to have folks going there!
Special acknowledgment to Jane B., Luann D., and Tom Z. for dropping comments this past week. These peeps are among those who help keep SET alive and thrashing. I appreciate the feedback and support. Appreciation is also in order for folks who clicked the like button. I like that, too!
And an additional thanks to Bryan W. for alerting me to a bad link. Please follow Bryan’s lead, as I can't correct faulty references so that they will not live on in perpetuity…sigh, not that anyone 1000 years from now will give a damn about what I’m writing.2
Recent contents (AKA “ToC”)
Here’s a catalog of what those new subscribers (and all the other subscribers of longer standing) had the opportunity to read over the past week.
Special Education Today newsletter 4(19)
The week’s news and info for the week beginning 28 October 2024
This person had ABA as a child, and he's doing just fine, thank you
Do you need a counter to the negative reports about applied behavior analysis and autism?
Voting by and for individuals with disabilities—2024
What's new on this front?
Project 2025 and its implications for special education
What's in store for special education according to the policy paper?
Byline: David BatemanWho are the people in our neighborhood?
Flashcards, workbooks and kits
Lovitt's Lines: How about an alternative perspective on common instructional materials from SET, 1985?
Isn't the children's book, "Oh No, Henry," a valuable way to help kids learn about teaching animals to behave?
Also, this past week, some readers may have seen a post entitled “Educational malpractice.” I mistakenly published it prematurely and have taken it off the site. Don’t worry, though, a completed version of the post will appear later. It’s a provocative topic, and readers will benefit from a a combination of historical and current observations that it will present.
Comments
Special education policy has been discussed extensively in the last few months, even as part of broader news cycles. EdWeek, which has become a regular source for people connected with education, and the Hechinger Report, which focuses almost exclusively on general education, have had discussions of special education policy.
I was reminded of the importance of policies’ influence on the practical level while reading posts on Leena’s FAPE4U3 ‘stack. She brings her experience at the building level as well as the local and state education agency levels to bear on the issues parents and families experience. She has written about IEP processes, hearing procedures, independent evaluations, complaints, and lots more. These topics are all heavily influenced by policy and will be of interest to many readers of SET.
SET has covered some policy topics, to be sure [see guest posts by Jim Kauffman (Fix or buy new) and David Bateman (Project 2025 and its implications for special education) for examples]. These posts are what I might call big-picture policy matters. Leena writes about the more fine-grained policy issues; she’s focusing on what happens when policies are implemented at the level of individuals and families. It’s really important to have these up-close-and-personal observations in combination with the public policy analyses.
The micro-level perspective is critical for us. We really need to remember the foundational ideas that undergird our efforts. We are not charged with addressing the great mass in education. Our job is special education, not regular education, even if we might have sincerely held and actionable ideas about how the latter might be improved. It is our focus that puts the I in IEP, the unique in unique educational needs, the individuals in IDEA.
That focus must go beyond policy, too. It must carry over to practice. An emphasis here on SET has been the “A” in FAPE: What constitutes appropriate education? I’ve argued that research—the evidence base—should have major weight in determining what is appropriate. But large parts of the evidence base do not tell us much about the individuals in studies. To be sure, studies employing single-subject (or -case) methods are idiopathic, but most researchers worship at the alter of averages. Averages tell about groups overall.
For example, we researchers might give 100s of students from tens of schools with dozens of teachers one educational method and compare the average outcomes for those students with the average for other 100s of students from tens of schools with dozens of teachers who received a different method. Holding a sheet of paper with some Greek letters and some fancy arithmetic on it and following a few dings of a bell, the announcer intones, “…And the winner is [dramatic pause] Method Q.”4
Well, yay! That tells us what’s a good place to start with whatever it is that Method Q addresses. Because we’re talking about exceptional students, however, we must be wary. That Method Q may be good on average, but is it good for our kids?5
And, so, in professional (i.e., “good”) special education practice, we need to see whether things work for our individual kids. We need to gather evidence at the individual level. We need to determine whether Method Q (faithfully administered, etc.) is helping our specific student. And that’s why need to use practices like curriculum-based measures to assess individual kids’ actual outcomes.
So, I’m leaving you with these recommendations from this commentary for this 20th newsletter of the fourth year of Special Education Today: Please remember that we’re working on behalf of individual learners (and their families). Whether we’re championing a policy or a practice, it needs to go through the sieve evidence: Is it working for this kiddo? We should give our biggest damn about kids a their outcomes.
Oh! Oh! That reminds me that following research and monitoring progress will be taking steps to care for the friends, family, and other people about whom we care. And, in combination with taking care of ourselves (Wear your seatbelt! Exercise regularly! Eat healthily!), we’ll be doing a lot of what will help us to teach our students well. And, that’s what Special Education Today is about.
Spread kindness, please.
JohnL
SET Editor guy
Charlottesville
SET should not be confused with a product with the same name that is published by the Council for Exceptional Children. SET predated CEC’s publication by decades (they call their’s “Special Education TODAY”). Despite my appreciation for CEC, this product is not designed to promote or compete with that organization. I’m not selling anything here other than the ideas that you read in the posts.
Don’t those two words—”august” and “bunch”—sound a bit odd together?
Of course, no one is little to care about this newsletter. However, I found the story behind research about people who died in 0079 (yes, almost 2000 years ago) in Pompeii pretty damn fascinating. Nature published papers about that research, and here’s a link to one: First DNA from Pompeii body casts illuminates who victims were: The sex and ancestry of five people who died in the eruption are revealed by genetic material embedded in the casts. The story to which I’m point is not the scientific report; it’s the “news” version, but it’s good enough to pique one’s interest—in my view.
The name for her Substack and her support-services LLC, FAPE4U, plays with the term familiar to most special educators (free and appropriate public education) and the name “Family Advocacy Partners in Education.”
To be sure, many researchers are not simply interested in main effects. High-quality group contrast research (and we have lots of it in special and remedial education) examines interactions. So, it’s not just that Method Q (or B or M) is the winner, but that the winning method works better for subgroups (boys, to take an easy example). Still, the questions about relative effectiveness or efficacy are based on comparisons of averages for the subgroups.
For all my research superiors, you’re right: This is a simplification. The point I hope I am making here deserves much more nuanced analysis. There are matters that matter (apologies) such as sample selection (e.g., representativity), comparison conditions (BAU?), statistical analytical procedures, and more…this is not the time to go for a swim in those deep pools. Here I’m just painting with the proverbial broad brush.