Special Education Today newsletter 5(1)
What's been happening while I was away...well, sorta-kinda away?
Good day and welcome back! You are reading the first issue of the fifth volume of the newsletter for Special Education Today. It’s the first Monday in July (2025), so it is the right time to start the new volume year.
And, as it happens, this first Monday in July is the anniversary of my mother’s birth: Alice Roberta Hannah Lloyd was born on this day in 1923. So, I’m going to celebrate. II'm deeply indebted to her for, as she said, “giving me the. gift of life.” Here’s an undated photo taken by her father of her birthplace, “Solitude,” about 40 minutes from where I live today.
SET is an Internet communication system providing current news and resources about special education and individuals with disabilities all around Earth. This edition of the SET newsletter has features that will be familiar to seasoned Dear Readers as well as a couple of one-off parts. Let’s get to it!
Perspective
SET appeared first in the 1980s when the late James M. Kauffman, the very much alive Daniel P. Hallahan, and I published a US-centric paper newsletter called “Special Education Today” for three years. I still have a complete set (teehee) of SET from those days. The accompanying photo shows an array of copies of those newsletters.1
From 2003 through 2016 I published an electronic Special Education Today (housed on my own server) that consisted of my own posts as well as contributions from other Web sources addressing special education. Readers who would like to explore those iterations of SET may find them in the Internet Archive More recently, SET published its first issue in the current incarnation 20 June 2021, emerging from Spedtalk’s brief run the month before. A few weeks after that first issue, I modified the entry in the domain name server network so that the Internet name “specialeducationtoday.com” pointed to this Substack location.
Activity updates
Readers will likely not be surprised to learn that there was relatively little activity on SET while it was on vacation the last couple of weeks in June. There were many days during that time period when, instead of the usual 700-800, there were about 150 visitors per day. Things ticked back up to more common levels beginning last week, the first week in July, when I began sending mailings about posts regularly again.
Welcome to K.J. B., Jenni R, Alison G., and Bear A., who’ve joined the group of about 80 subscribers who support SET financially. It’s great to have y’all here! Thank you.
As of this post, there are 977 subscribers for SET. Counting followers, there are a total of ~1260 addresses connected to SET. About 85% of the subscribers come from the USA and 4% from Australia. There are multiple subscribers from (in alphabetic order) Canada, Germany, India, Morocco, Nigeria, Portugal, Taiwan, Turkey, and the UK.
As Volume 5 gets rolling, I’ll be able to report more instances of subscribers commenting on posts, sharing, and such. Watch this space for updates.
Contributors updates
Regular readers know that SET has had the benefit of contributions by outstanding special educators every now and again over the years. For example, a few weeks before he passed away, James M. Kauffman contributed “Fix or buy new?” to SET.
Similarly, we have had the good fortune to have posts with Mandy Rispoli (e.g., “More ABA Medicaid fraud”), Mitchell Yell and David Bateman (e.g., “B. Bateman’s Educational malpractice”), and David Bateman on his own (e.g., “Project 2025 and its implications for special education”).
Here's some good news for you, Dear Readers! David, Mandy, and Mitch are all coming back for the new season! Hooray. They’ll be joining me as co-authors on posts and they will have (goddesses willing) new posts on their own, too.
Also. two additional authors will join the SET team this year. Li-Yu Hung (Li-Yu, of course, uses the convention of her home culture and identifies herself as HUNG, Li-Yu). and Ana Paula Loução Martins, Because they are native speakers of Mandarin and Portuguese, I am hoping that they will contribute articles in those languages as well as in English.
Paula, who is a professor at the University of Minho in Portugal, is a teacher-educator and researcher who had extensive connections throughout the Portuguese-speaking world (I think they say, “Lusophony” or “Mundo Lusófono”) as well as elsewhere in Europe and Africa. You can read about her background from here Minho profile (Portuguese) or her Ciência page (English). I am looking forward to her alerting SET readers to what’s happening with special education and disabilities in Portugal and elsewhere.
Li-Yu is a professor at National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei, where she also serves as Vice President for the School of Teacher Education. She has tremendous connections throughout Asia (and the rest of the world, too, for that matter) and expertise in important aspects of special education and disabilities. Learn more about Li-Yu from her NTTU profile in English or Mandarin.
Recent contents
The list of recent posts in this issue as it spans a longer time period than the usual week and it starts with the last issue of the previous volume. Also, the density of posts is not as substantial as it often has been because I simply wasn’t posting as often during SET’s summer break. Also, please note that some of them have already outlived their time out on the free side, so they’ve slipped behind the paywall.
Anyway, here is a list of the “recent” posts, starting with the final newsletter of Volume 4.
Special Education Today newsletter 4(51): What? Are we done for the year?
ADHD treatment might be misdirected: Have we missed the boat on ADHD?
Kids with disabilities are lobbying the US legislature: Who's visiting US lawmakers?
Ed Week on multi-sensory reading: What did a leading education news source report?
Birthdays of two contributors: What's not to celebrate about contributions by Janet Lerner and Emily Solari?
Simpson autism conference 2025: What might one learn from this meeting?
Surprise ADHD magazine in the check-out lane: What did I find when I was at the supermarket?
SIAT: ICYMI: Is there anything valuable to learn about autism in the regular newsletter from ASAT?
4 July 2025: Will you forgive me a little boosterism for my neighborhood?
First person report of successful literacy instruction: What can we learn absit literacy coaching in a tiered system of instruction?
Experts' report on inclusion in the UK: Is there anything substantive to be learned from people's descriptions of special education practices?
Commentary
With this issue, SET begins its fifth year. From it’s early days when it had a few score subscribers (all free) to its second year when subscribership had about doubled and I welcomed the first paying subscribers to this past year when it grew to nearly 1000 subscribers, I have harbored hopes that SET would become an international, self-sustaining community of educators and friends of kids with disabilities. I think that I am very close to seeing that hope realized.
I am eager to move ahead with SET this year. With the addition of international contributors and the continuing contributions for US authors, I expect that SET will develop an even broader reach, a more diverse and substantial readership. Regardless of the language we speak or the political environment in which we work, we all—parents, teachers, administrators, policy makers, advocates, and psychologists—must address common issues. We need to ensure that our kids can get needed services, that they are adapted to individual needs, that they are delivered by competent (and caring) educators, and that those services are beneficial.
It has been a great pleasure to have many Dear Readers along for the ride the entire duration of SET’s existence. And I am pleased to welcome all of the more recent subscribers. Initially, a large proportion of the readership was people I know in real life, but now there are many, many of you whom I’ve never met IRL. We’re just getting to know each other via the intertubes. However, I feel a kinship with all y’all2 because of our shared interest in special education and children and youths with disabilities.
Can SET become an Earth-wide influencer for the good of special education and individuals with disabilities? I hope so. I think you, Dear Readers, agree. I am eager to continue pursuing that goal in the coming year.
Thank you for being a part of the effort and thank you for all that you do day in and day out for our kids. Please stay safe and healthy and remember, of course, to teach our kids well.
JohnL
John Wills Lloyd, Ph.D.
UVA Professor Emeritus
Founder & Editor, https://www.SpecialEducationToday.com/
Please do not confuse SET 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
I hasten to note that neither Jim nor Dan is culpable for the content of the current incarnation of SET. There’s no sense in suing them.
It’s OK., I was born in Richmond, VA, so I understand that the plural of “y’all” is “all y’all.”