Special education

This article is about educating students with disabilities or behavioral problems. For information about educating gifted students, see Gifted education.

Special education is the term most commonly used to describe the methodology and practice of education for students with special needs, such as learning differences, mental health issues, specific disabilities (physical or developmental). Ideologies and application of special education can differ from region to region, nation to nation, but most developed countries recognize the importance of the field.

Purpose

Special education exists primarily because of the belief that certain students are not capable of receiving the same level of education if taught in the same manner and with the same techniques as the larger school population. Special education students often have different needs, learn in different ways and socially interact differently than other students. Accordingly, special education exists so as to ensure that students with special needs receive an education equal to the rest of the student body, by imploring researched and verified methods that help individual students learn in the style most beneficial to them.

Methodology

Special Education is the individually planned and systematically monitored arrangement of physical settings, special equipment and materials, teaching procedures, and other interventions designed to help learners with special needs achieve the greatest possible personal self-sufficiency and success in school and community.

Criticism

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• Special education has been a field in which large, empirical studies have been difficult to implement, given the differences in service delivery models. In a meta-analysis of special education, researchers found no significant effect size when examining the relationship between student outcomes and inclusion in special education (see Kavale, K. A., Glass, G. V (1982) The Efficacy of Special Education Interventions and Practices: A Compendium of Meta-Analysis Findings. Focus on Exceptional Children, v15 n4 p1-14).
• Special education as implemented in public schools has been criticized because the qualification criteria for services are extremely variable from one education agency to another. In the United States, all Local and State Education Agencies must use classification and labeling models that are aligned with the federal definitions, outlined the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

• At-risk students (those with educational needs that are not associated with a disability) are often placed in classes with students with disabilities. Critics assert that placing at-risk students in the same classes as disabled students may impede the educational progress of people with disabilities.

• Special education programs continue to be criticized by disability activists because they are still often segregated from regular education programs.

• The currently popular practice of inclusion has been criticized by advocates and some parents of children with disabilities because some of these students require instructional methods that differ dramatically from typical classroom methods. Critics assert that it is not possible to deliver effectively two or more very different instructional methods in the same classroom. As a result, the educational progress of students who depend on different instructional methods to learn often fall even further behind their peers without disabilities.

• Parents of typically developing children often fear that the special needs of a single "fully included" student will take critical levels of attention and energy away from the rest of the class and thereby impair the academic achievements of all students.

• Some parents, advocates, and students have concerns about the eligibility criteria and its application. In some cases, parents and students protest the students' placement into special education programs. For example, a student may be placed into the special education programs due to a mental health condition such as OCD, depression, anxiety, panic attacks or ADHD, while the student and his parents believe that the condition is adequately managed through medication and outside therapy. In other cases, students whose parents believe they require the additional support of special education services are denied participation in the program based on the eligibility criteria.

• An alternative to homogenization and lockstep standardization is proposed, using the Sudbury model schools, an alternative approach in which children learn at their own pace rather than following a chronologically-based curriculum. Proponents of unschooling have also claimed that children raised in this method do not suffer from learning disabilities.

• Gerald Coles, in his book, The Learning Mystique: A Critical Look at "Learning Disabilities", asserts that there are partisan agendas behind the educational policy-makers and that the scientific research that they use to support their arguments regarding the teaching of literacy are flawed. These include the idea that there are neurological explanations for learning disabilities.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Wilmshurst, L, & Brue, A. W. (2005). A parent's guide to special education. New York: AMACOM.

External links

• National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilities (NICHCY)
• Council for Exceptional Children
• Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services U.S. Department of Education
• When It's Your Own Child: A Report on Special Education from the Families Who Use It Public Agenda, 2002 (US)
• Inclusive Education in Scotland (UK)
• LD Online

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