Special Education Today newsletter 4(22)

The newsletter for the week of 18 November 2024

Last week, I opened with, ”Welcome to the 21st edition of the fourth year of the newsletter for Special Education Today.” This week I can dang near start the same way: “Welcome to the 22nd edition of the fourth year of the newsletter” for SET. That start should not surprise readers, nor should people fall over dead when they learn that this issue appears 25 November 2024, and it includes the usual photo, some notes about the status of SET, a list of posts that appeared during the previous week, and some comments.

Photo

Last week, I led with a photo of three people with whom I very much enjoying visiting. I speculated that I’d only see one of them—Tim Landrum—at the regular meeting of Teacher Educators for Children with Behavior Disorders, because he was on the program. Although Betsy Talbott didn’t make it, Melody Tankersley surprised me by attending the meeting in Tempe, AZ, on 21 November 2024! Someone using Melody’s camera photographed Melody, Tim, and me at the brief reception for Jim Kauffman, who was a regular for very many iterations of this meeting.

Melody Tankersley, the old man, and Tim Landrum at TECBD 2024. Photo from Melody’s phone, © 2024 Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Woohoo! That was fun!

Flashes of the electrons

Maybe I should call this section “tip of the sombrero,” given my foray into the Southwest part of the US. Whatever the phrase for acknowledging interactions with the content on SET, here are notes about clicking the comment, like, and subscribe buttons.

• Thanks to the supporting subscribers for SET, some of whom are Candace S., Wayne, Jean S., Nancy M., Blaine G.-M., Ann R., Jane H., Cheryl Z., Pei Jung H., Caitlin W., Paige P., Luann D., Cheryl D., and Tom Z. Special additional thanks to Betsy T., who dropped a comment this past week (and, as previously noted, was missed at TECBD).

• Howdy to new readers, Kaitlin, Sarah, Gupta, Karen & Richard S., Carrie D., Stephen M., and Prakash N.! It’s great to have you joining the community. You’ve helped SET edge up toward 800 subscribers and the total number of followers to go well north of 900.

• Waves to Sandi R. (lots of waves), Gita U., Sean M. (a whole lot of waves), Jen W., Christina B., Jane B., Anmarie U., and others who pressed the “like” button this past week.

• Even though I’ve got this at the end of the catalog, from the jump (basketball reference there), let me say, “Thank you…yes!” to those readers who go beyond the basic cost, and chip in at a sustaining level. Li-Yu, Kathy, and Mike have been among the sustaining supporters for years.

And, thanks to those readers of SET who tell friends and acquaintances about SET. Click that share button! Forward posts! Copy Web locations for SET content and send it to others who share your interest in kids with disabilities and the special education that they should receive.

Also, please remember that there are special rates for group subscriptions—directors of local education agencies, professors at higher education institutions, principals of schools, and others can secure group subs to SET (each member gets her own subscription) and use the posts for development and discussion. Write to me for the details—just reply to the email version of this message.

Just in case it’s helpful, here’s a link to share this post!

This week’s ToC

Well, I posted nine notes on SET proper since the last newsletter.¹ They were posts #1113-#1121 over the life of SET. I hope that readers found them informative and maybe even inspiring. Many of them are related to the TECBD conference. Here's a listing:

1. Special Education Today newsletter 4(21): The week’s news and info for the week of 11 November 2024

2. Advanced study alternatives: Where might one pursue doctoral training in special education?

3. A new special education journal: RiSE: What’s not to like about an open-access journal publishing high-quality research about special education?

4. R. Ennis & T. Landrum: What are they doing rn?

5. N. Gage and T. Scott on research: How about a conversation on the relationship between research and practice with kids who have EBD?

6. M. Yell & M. Couvillon on evidence and law: What’s the legal role of evidence in providing services for kids with EBD?

7. P. Leone and M. Krezmien about juvenile justice issues: What are concerns about kids with behavior disorders in markedly confined settings?

8. And at the end, some guys summarized: Who attended the sessions at TECBD-24?

9. UK Disability history month: Why should emphasis on employing individuals with disabilities only be a focus in October?

Commentary

After shagging my sorry, old self about 2300 miles from CHO to PHX and then back home again, I am a little slowed as I prepare this week’s newsletter. I don’t mean this as a complaint—I had a lot of professional and person good times.² Still, 11-12 hours on airplanes and even more time sitting in waiting areas takes a toll on this old man.

Some of that travel time had stimulating features, however. On the flight from Charlotte (a nearby hub for Charlottesville) to Phoenix, I sat with a business person who was a fascinating conversationalist. I usually dive into work or reading when I travel, barely interacting with others beyond exchanging pleasantries, but talking with my seat mate (let’s call her “Beth”) turned out to have an engaging SET twist.

As we talked about the reasons for our travels, Beth revealed to me that her brother had been disabled since he was about four years old, maybe 70 years ago, as a result of an accident: He was kicked in the head by a mule.³ That was Twist 1.

I asked how the brother was doing. She said he was doing well. He needed a powered chair to move about; he could use his hands enough to more a stick and didn’t have to use a sip-and-puff system to navigate it. He needed personal care for activities of daily living, etc. (I’m sparing readers the details of the questions I asked to learn about this person’s situation. You can imagine me asking what I hope were polite questions about delicate matters like…say…toileting.) I learned a lot about Beth’s brother’s condition and the assistance provided by an attendant and Beth’s daughter, who is studying medicine in the same city where the brother still lives in their family’s home (even though their parents have passed away). Beth explained that her brother had a very good situation, that from the time of his boyhood, their father had asserted that they were going to be able to “take care of him” and they had. She said that their father (a successful entrepreneur; I think Beth may be an executive in the current company their father founded) did not want to accept any “help.”

Here’s Twist 2 on my travel experience. When I boarded my return flight in PHX, as I was approaching my seat, I head a voice say, “Hello, John. How was your conference?” At first I thought, “Who’s this woman asking me this? Is she some professor whom I’ve forgotten meeting?” Then I realized it was Beth. We each had the same seat for the return flight as we had been in for the outgoing flight! So, we lapsed into conversation as if we knew each other as neighbors. I told her it was the only time in 60 years of air travel I remembered having sat next to someone other than my wife or daughter in going to and returning from a destination.

We got to talking, and Beth told me she’d been thinking about our previous conversation. She wondered what I thought about abolishing the US Department of Education. In the context of our earlier conversation, which had not ventured into political views, this seemed like a simple, honest question. Of course, I recognized that it might come from a political perspective that she hadn’t shared with me previously, so my antennae were waving about and sampling the environment.

Thankful that I had thought about this topic previously (see, e.g., the SET Newsletter for 8 July 2024), I explained to Beth that I had concerns about the implications of such a change for kids with disabilities and their families. I told her that the laws said the US government would provide 40% of the extra costs for educating kids with disabilities, but that the reality was that it was providing far less and that Congress’s failure to allocate the funds turned out to make ED look bad. I said that I understood some policy makers’ views that education was a responsibility of the states, but I was concerned about unequal distribution of resources and protections. I knew that people had proposed moving some ED functions to other departments (e.g., civil rights to Justice), but I fretted about whether departments would have a comprehensive, integrated view of educational issues that would allow them to administer those functions. I also expressed concern about whether the kids and families in the diverse US states would have equitable treatment—would it be right if kids with disabilities in North Podunk, Virginia, got some educational opportunities that were markedly different from their neighbors with disabilities living in South Podunk, North Carolina, just because they were separated by a state border? And I talked about teachers; I mentioned ED’s influence on teacher preparation and how teacher shortages were felt at a very local level, but that there were 1000s of localities around the country that were suffering similar shortages—especially with teachers for kids with disabilities—and those localities would be served better by a set of policies coordinated at a national level than by a patch work of 50 or more differing policies.

There were no dismissive smirks, heated moments, or emotional challenges as we chatted. Beth listened attentively and asked questions as we talked. I probably didn’t convince her that should continue to be a Department of Education. But, she did say that she hadn’t thought about the topic in the ways that I was discussing. She wanted to take time to reflect on those matters again.

After she napped and my chin kept hitting my chest, the flight ended. We left the plane together and walked toward our destinations (curbside pick up by her husband for Beth; the next flight for me). At airport-terminal walking speed, we went our separate ways.

Anyway, make of my travel report whatever you may. Regardless of your take, though, I hope that you will remember by usual admonitions: Stay safe (seatbelts!), take care of your family and friend (that includes taking appropriate precautions about spreading viri), and, of course, please teach your children well.

JohnL

SET Editor guy
A not-so-mighty policy guy who needed Betsy T. and Linda L. coaching me
Charlottesville

Please remember that 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 (see “Lovitt’s Lines” for examples from those days). Despite my appreciation for CEC, this product is not designed to promote that organization. I’m not selling anything here other than what you read in the posts.

1. I wrote “proper” because I wanted to acknowledge the “notes” I posted on the more chatty part of Substack. There are some things that appear there but not on the main site.

2. While in Tempe, I not only got to see a lot of friends from my academic career, but I also got to catch up with two pals, Linda and Larry H., who were neighbors in the mid-70s. I have a disability connection with Larry and Linda: Their son was born deaf and we got to be part of his community during a couple of his early childhood years…and he’s now in his 50s and supporting himself and his family with his substantial technologic skills. That was a treat!

3. Some readers will recognize that the cause of the brother’s disability gave me an opportunity to talk about the history of Prussian soldiers’ deaths as a result of rare events: Horse kicks to the head. Deaths by horse kicks rarely occur, but one can plot the distribution of them over time. And that, of course, allowed me to mention the Poisson Distribution as a quick aside. It turns out that the Poisson distribution occurs naturally with other events, such as birth defects associated with disability (see the Louisiana Birth Defects Monitoring Network report of 2020 for a discussion). So, I got to use one of the 1975 stat classes that I took as a doctoral student right there while flying at 30,000+ feet across the USA in 2024.