Teach Effectively!

Although he had previously reported doubts about the functioning of special education in New York (NY, US) schools, New York Times writer Michael Winerip now reports that he has seen multiple examples of general and special educators teaching collaboratively. In an earlier article in the Times, Mr. Winerip described concerns about collaborative teaching, but he reports his view has changed.

In a column…I mentioned troubles at a P.S. 75 kindergarten last year and soon after got an angry email from the principal, Robert O’Brien. While Mr. O’Brien acknowledged problems, he said that they were the exception; he had nine effective classes, he said, and he invited me to see them.

I visited and agree, the model seems to work well at P.S. 75. I saw a good deal of hope and much skilled teaching. In first grade, while Ms. Lopez taught a math lesson, Ms. Martindale sat beside the most distracted girl and boy and with a few whispered words, kept them on task. When a boy who has retardation couldn’t answer a question, Ms. Martindale had the child call on a helper for the answer, and the class moved along briskly.

Mr. Winerip reports that, although the percentage of children with disabilities scoring at the proficient level statewide is 15%, for the school he visited 19% of children with disabilities reached the proficient level. I don’t know what the standard deviation is for the statewide percentage, so it’s hard to say whether that difference just reflects (1) normal variation around the mean, (2) characteristics of the population attending the school, or (3) benefits from the special education program.

Link to Mr. Winerip’s story (free registration may be required; charge for access after a copule of weeks).

In an e-mail message, my colleague and friend Joel Mittler of Long Island University (NY, US) reminded me

[Today] is the 30th anniversary of IDEA. Most of us are probably too young to recall life before IDEA (or perhaps too old to remember). With all its flaws and problems, perhaps we should take a moment and in our own way remind out colleagues, students, and others of what it means to have a law that guarantees an education to all children, no matter what their disability. I like to note that we had compulsory education laws in this country in the 1850s but it took another 100+ years to include children with disabilities. While we continue to fight among ourselves as well as with those in power, it’s also not a bad time to thank those that made it all possible. I’ll start with Fred Weintraub and Ed Martin. Thanks, guys. Who else deserves a good hug?

Joel

Some parents of African-American students in Connecticut complained about over-representation of children of color in special education at a forum held by the Connecticut state Department of Education, according to a story by Mathew J. Malone. The parents expressed concern about whether teachers are prepared to work with children from minority backgrounds, whether parents are capable of using available procedures to challenge special education diagnoses, and whether factors such as ethnicity enter into educational decisions. The state education agency (SEA) is examining issues of over-representation and was taking testimony from parents.

Data from the 2004-05 school year show black students are about three times more likely than whites to be classified as mentally retarded and twice as likely to be labeled emotionally disturbed.

Black students also are more likely, albeit marginally, to be classified as special education students. The disparity in the three categories has grown during the past three years.

About 1,800 Stamford students, about 12 percent of total enrollment, receive special education services. About 130 are classified with an intellectual disability, the state’s term for mental retardation, or emotional disturbance, which refers to learning problems born of emotional, behavioral or mental disorders.

Nearly half of the students in those categories are black, district data show.

Problems of disproportionality are not unique to Connecticut. I think they should be addressed. They will continue to be confounded by another problem, however. As long as faulty teaching methods and practices continue to be used by schools, there are going to be some students who will require special education for the wrong reasons. We have to eliminate the instructional casualties before we can determine which students need special education services because of some characteristics of their’s, not the schools’.

Link to Mr. Malone’s story.

JoLynn Fox reported about the special education program in Holbrook (AZ; US). Her story is based almost exclusively on an interview with Linda Blansett the director of special education for the local education agency and it has few surprises.

Link to Ms. Fox’s story.

I recently came across “Play Attention,” a patented bio-feedback system designed to develop individuals’ control of their own brain waves and, thereby, help them develop the ability to attend (focus, concentrate). I have a vague recollection of seeing a discussion of it 10-15 years ago, but I hadn’t pursued it carefully. A few weeks agoI spent a bit of time investigating it.

Readers familiar with my bias will anticipate my first questions: Does it work? How do we know whether it’s effective? Some preliminary evidence is good, but where’s the proverbial beef?

The Web site for the product offers limited evidence of effectiveness. It does not provide links to others’ research nor does it list references to research studies. It provides five testimonials and two studies. The testimonials are called “peer reviews” and are composed of answers by teachers to survey questions. The first study is labeled “educational research” and is a report about improvements (pretest-posttest) in Connors Continuous Performance Test scores of seven children in an elementary. The second study is “scientific research” and reports the results of two case studies conducted by a clinical psychologist in which boys’ scores on the Integrated Visual & Auditory Continuous Performance Test improved as well as parent ratings of performance (all pretest-posttest).

The Internet is littered with references to Play Attention, but they don’t provide evidence of effectiveness. ADD and Sensory Integration sites feature it. Clinical psychologists tout it. Technology stores sell it. Newspapers and magazines review it uncritically. Drat! Where’s the evidence?

There are a couple of supportive treatments. Tamara Ashton wrote a column about it for Journal of Special Education Technology in 2001 (“Improving Attention, Reducing Behavior Problems, and Bolstering Self-Esteem: The Many Benefits of Play Attention,” 16.2). She covered the evidence I described in the previous paragraph as well as an article by J. A. Siglan Intervention in School and Clinic (2000, “Play Attention: Focusing on success,” 36.2, 122-124). I don’t find the evidence as compelling as these titles suggest Ashton and Siglan do.

The reason I have this vague recollection is that I read actual studies examining the effects of biofeedback on attention in the 80s and 90s.

I still want to know whether Play Attention works in applied settings. It definitely merits a “use with caution” label. Couldn’t someone simply randomly assign some students to Play Attention training, some to a placebo, and some to a control condition then monitor their performance over time (can anyone say “CBM?”)? Until then, it’s just another example of an interesting idea translated into practice and hyped without having evidence of effectiveness.

What should we learn from all this? I’m left with this lesson: We educators need to do an even-better job of communicating the importance of evidence-based education. We can welcome new ideas that hold promise, but we have to hold them up to the clear, bright light of scientific scrutiny before we put them into practice. Our clients’ outcomes depend on us doing this.

A blogger who identifies herself as Stasha posted a note about her recent experiences with her son’s school. She reported that after she suspected problems when the boy was in first grade, she approached the school but got no help. She pursued private testing and the school then completed its own testing, but refused to declare him eligible for services. Then she thought she got help from the principal: A 504 plan was developed and implemented.

Fast forward 3 years of fighting with the teachers and the resource faculty. This year we have a new principal and a new resource teacher and my son only reads on a 1st grade level. The school psychologist doesn’t think he has any psychological issues beyond the coping mechanisms he’s developed to hide his learning disability. I’ve now hired a private tutor who wanted to come to the school and do one of his sessions during the time that he was in school. We tried it once. The principal and new resource teacher had an absolute hissy fit. We started going over files. All the stuff Barb gave me, all the copies of the independent testing, the 504 that we wrote up with the former principal – - NONE OF IT IS IN THE FILES. The only thing in the file is the testing the school did that showed he was on grade level and the 504 that we refused because I was not going to medicate him for a condition he doesn’t have.

So the principal and the resource teacher are jumping all over me for not having him tested when he first started falling behind. I just sat there dumbfounded. For FOUR YEARS I have been begging for help. Now they’re saying that I’m the problem because the previous resource teacher is claiming that we refused to allow her to work with him. EXCUSE ME???

Stasha goes on to explain that she has provided documentation, but will continue to secure private tutoring for her son. I don’t blame her for making the effort. I hope it’s very powerful tutoring. It is really too bad so much time was lost. The boy’s getting older; the peer group is about to take over for his parents as the most potent force in his life.

To the extent that objective assessments reveal deficits, this sure looks like one of those cases where the push not to identify students trumped a child’s needs. Apparently, the general education environment wasn’t supple enough to adapt to his needs, didn’t make the necessary adjustments, didn’t monitor progress, etc. Given today’s climate, there will probably be 90 days of weak interventions under the guise of “response-to-intervention,” and even more valuable time will be lost.

Link to Stasha’s posting.

May of 2005 I commented on the high-quality information one can gain from the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies (CCBS). I was just visiting the site again and want to remind folks that they should take the time to learn about it. CCBS promotes the application of applied behavior analysis and behavioral psychology to the solution of real-world problems, including education.

The methods, techniques, and practices described by folks from CCBS are firmly based on research. They are neither extrapolations from neurological studies nor interpretations of developmental research. They are directly tested using questions of the form, “Does using procedure X produce clear and compelling improvements in performance on measure M” (where M is an outcome of importance such as reading, speaking, interacting appropriately, and so forth). In other words, once can pretty much trust what one learns from the CCBS folks.

The overall site uses frames, so the first link at the bottom will take you to an introductory page and you’ll have to use navigation menus to locate relevant sections. For people’s ease, I’ve extracted links to a couple of specific pages, but following them will reduce the navigability of the site. That’s O.K. One should explore this cave of valuable content at length.

Links:

• Main page for the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies
• Austism
• Education

The U.S. Congress is preparing to acknowlege the 30th anniversary of the passage of Public Law 91-142, the Education of Handicapped Children Act which is the predecessor to the contemporary Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The draft resolution is available as a PDF.

Download a copy (Windows users, right-click the link; Mac users, control click).