System Reform to Reach 98 Percent

By Pia Durkin
Superintendent of schools of Attleboro, Massachussetts, and former Associate Director at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform

Copyright © 2006 Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University

This article is excerpted from:
Voices in Urban Education Educating Vulnerable Pupils, VUE Number 12, Summer 2006

For most of the past two decades, school reformers have largely ignored special education. Most reform efforts have emphasized school-by-school improvement, bypassing the district and its central office as agents for reform. Special education, on the other hand, has been primarily district-based, with a stronger focus on managerial and compliance issues than on achievement and equity.

This discrepancy has worked against collective responsibility and shared ownership for the results of all students and has tacitly supported the belief that only some students are capable of high achievement. Additionally, the complex legal issues within special education (supporting hard-won individual rights for students with disabilities) act as barriers to a systems view in which special education and general education work in substantive and sustained partnership.

Recently, however, the scope of disaggregated data mandated by No Child Left Behind has increased attention to the low achievement results for students in special education, which now directly affect district and school adequate yearly progress (AYP) status. Despite conscientious efforts, the achievement gap stubbornly persists in districts where significant portions of students are served through special education. Most attention has been focused on the achievement gap between racial groups (particularly between White students and students of color). Less attention has been paid to the complexities of the achievement gap where race and special education intersect. A new sense of urgency calls for a review of the complex needs of students served within urban districts and which students can be best served through special education programs.

A significant percentage of students in special education, when seen with their general education peers in non-school settings, are not readily identifiable as needing specialized services. They are not among the 2 percent of the school population who have clear and identifiable "low-incidence disabilities," such as blind, deaf, or multiply handicapped students, whose status is not subject to individual interpretation, as is the case with learning and emotional/behavioral disabilities. They do persistently struggle with literacy and math assignments. They demonstrate cumulative gaps in learning, falling further behind as the content grows more complex. They quickly become disengaged when instruction does not meet their needs, often resulting in troubling behaviors.

These students are soon referred to special education, to be served "somewhere else" rather than within the general education classroom. They constitute a large proportion of those who drop out, who fail to graduate on time, and who have fewer postsecondary options. Only a third of students with disabilities graduate from high school with a regular diploma, compared with more than two-thirds of all students, and the dropout rate of students with disabilities is more than twice that of other students (Education Week 2004).
Today's educational environment calls for a new approach to the now-separate general and special education programs. It calls for a comprehensive and unified system that goes significantly beyond timeworn boundaries.

Today's educational environment calls for a new approach to the nowseparate general and special education programs. It calls for a comprehensive and unified system that goes significantly beyond timeworn boundaries and organizational structures and the traditional "hats" district leaders currently wear. This new approach requires bold educational leaders who can question and challenge the assumptions that have led to the separate personnel preparation systems, separate budgetary allocations, and separate legal and policy underpinnings that are often formulated far from practitioners who are responsible for implementation.

The success – or failure – of public education as a whole now unites general and special education. The major issues faced by districts in special education – inappropriate referrals, low achievement results, and inadequate coordination of resources – are, in fact, symptoms of systemwide problems that require unified solutions. And, as the entity that has the authority, scale, and resources to rise to these challenges, the school system is the right place to create those solutions.

The Vision: Unifying General and Special Education

Imagine a district with a successful partnership between special education and the broader system in which it is embedded. A coordinated array of supports and opportunities reflects the depth and breadth of differentiated services available for both adults and students across a system where special education is no longer a silo. Together, system leaders – within and beyond special education – focus their reform priorities on the students who are furthest behind and who need the most supports to reach proficiency. And, together, these leaders develop strategies to share resources needed to support those priorities.

Every school in this visionary district meets AYP status for students with disabilities and English-language learners. These students' assets have enriched every classroom in the district. Practitioners discuss student work, analyze gaps in performance, make their work public through peer observations, and model sound practice for one another. School staff embrace the notion that each student will make satisfactory progress, and they commit to reaching that goal by collaborating with and learning from each other.

Students transferring into this district who, on entry, had been earmarked for special education services, demonstrate strong academic progress. A parent who had previously threatened to sue the district for lack of supports to her child is now mobilizing the community to pass a bond issue that will increase resources for the district. And, most important, every student – with or without a mandated Individualized Education Program (IEP) – thrives in school because each gets what he or she needs to succeed.

The Challenge: Competing, Not Collaborating, Systems

The reality of urban districts today is, of course, dramatically different from the picture above. Rather than emphasizing equitable outcomes for all students, most systems focus on compliance with federal and state mandates as the indicator of success for special education. Shared ownership is squelched by fragmentation in structure and process. Decisions are linked to labels and program titles, instead of student needs. Examples of these dichotomies are prevalent in district practice:

• Despite some progress, the achievement gap persists in urban districts between students of color, Englishlanguage learners, and students with disabilities and their White, native English-speaking peers. Disability identification processes are intertwined with race and class issues.
• Nationally, graduation and dropout rates, as well as employment status, are persistently lower for students served in urban districts (Swanson 2004).
• The presence of special education students within schools often leads to inaccurate perceptions about their effect on schools' not meeting AYP targets. Although some parents and teachers attribute schools' failure to make AYP to the low performance of students with disabilities, only 13 percent of schools were so identified because of the performance of that group alone (U.S. Dept. of Ed. 2006).
• As district resources dwindle, budgeting practices often become a zero-sum game where allocations for some must balance with "not enough for all." Resentment breeds among special interest groups, and collaborative solutions are often blocked by inadequate communication and limited understanding of which legal requirements are binding and which allow for flexibility to serve a larger purpose.
• District and school accountability often fail to address the expectations and belief systems of the adults within the system who can impact the achievement of certain subgroups of students.

According to Beth Harry and Janette Klingner (2006, p. 173), system leaders are confronted with the "inequities related to the three main phases of the process: children's opportunity to learn prior to referral, the decision-making processes that led to special education placement, and the quality of [student outcomes from] the special education experience itself." But these leaders find few systemic tools and processes to help them unpack these challenges and devise solutions for collaboration between general and special education.

Superintendents and others are increasingly asking for help in applying large-scale reform practices to the tensions and challenges of special education and in connecting these issues to general education practices. The following sections suggest a new approach to the relationship between general and special education and a starting place for an ongoing conversation focused on solutions to address the challenges to achieving such a system.

Taking a New Approach

For the system envisioned earlier to become reality, general and special education leaders and major stakeholders in urban education need new ways of thinking about how general and special education work together. Special educators can do a better job of defining the issues, and general educators can do a better job of asking the right questions, enabling both groups to learn with and from each other. Political leaders, city council members, parents, and school board members will also benefit from considering the issues related to special education as part of the larger reform picture.

illustration The complex nuances of special education have inhibited such dialogue across the general and special education sectors. A comprehensive and unified approach is now called for as the most effective way to support all students. There are more similarities than differences between the academic and social/ emotional needs of general education students and most special education students. By acknowledging that every student needs differentiated supports at various points in his or her educational career, urban systems can more readily provide for those needs by building an array of coordinated supports across general and special education that captures the underlying relationships between the adults in the system who will plan for, use, and continually refine the supports and opportunities within the array.

This array would be dynamic and flexible, as well as broad and deep, to allow for thoughtful decisions regarding what both the adults and students need to achieve success. It would encompass the full range of supports and opportunities for students served through both general and special education, as well as whatever level of ongoing or occasional supports each child may need.

More than a mere list of services to "pick and choose" from, the array of services would be accompanied by structures and processes that provide the "scaffolding" for good decision making based on data. And the array would incorporate accountability in assessing the impact of particular supports, how to measure their effect, and what adjustments are needed to ensure results. For example, the analysis of how schoolwide positive behavioral support practices are impacting out-of-class and out-of-school suspensions would be valuable data to gather and use. This array would not be bound simply by resource issues but, rather, would represent a "change of mindset" as to how to realign what currently exists in separate and disjointed segments into a unified framework.

These supports would include:

• Teaching and learning supports (e.g., literacy strategies)
• Social/emotional supports (e.g., counseling and mental health)
• Systemic organizational supports (e.g., school climate program expectations)
• Community/family supports or extended learning opportunities (e.g., partnerships with cultural organizations)

These supports would be connected and informed by several "contexts," including:

• Cultural beliefs and expectations
• Policy and legal context
• Organizational context

Such a comprehensive array of supports and opportunities would help urban districts serve both general education students and those special education students who are in the mild disabilities range, for whom referral and identification for special education services are most susceptible to differing professional interpretations. The remaining 2 percent of students with significant, low-incidence disabilities have particular needs that are amply documented in the literature.

Anticipating and Navigating the Minefields in Thought and Action

The issue of restructuring special education within the context of general education reform is not a new issue. The question remains: Why has it not already been done? To plan and construct the array described above, several "minefields" need to be navigated. Key tensions and challenges exist within urban districts.

Outcomes versus Process
The district is responsible for compliance with federal and state regulations; schools are responsible for teaching and learning. But, at schools, teaching and learning for special education students have had lower priority than compliance mandates. Districts that are deemed "successful" in special education need to be defined not by their compliance status but with their laser-like focus on supports for schools with respect to achievement for students. Those supports need to be articulated and shared as part of the above array and require a balance between centralized and schoolbased autonomy issues.

Progress versus Proficiency
A critical component for the array is a data system in which key information regarding referrals to special education (grade levels, reasons, service options, etc.) is reviewed and analyzed. Data that measure the progress of students are important for both internal and external communication regarding special education.

Prevention versus Reaction
The lack of an array of supports in general education and limited assessment tools are two of the reasons for inappropriate referrals to special education for students of color and those with different language backgrounds. Investment in building preventive programs should become the norm, rather than the typical response of additional special education services that is required when students have been failed by general education. This dynamic also comes into play in planning for new initiatives. For example, as small learning communities take root within the high school reform context, their lack of planning for balance in dealing with large numbers of special education students has seriously undermined efforts in terms of equity and access.

Capacity Building versus Quick Fixes
The perspectives and issues of the adults in the system should not get in the way of unified programs serving all students. How leaders interact, how professional development is planned and implemented, and how the central office communicates and supports schools throughout the district are among the issues that need to be dealt with directly.

When system leaders and stakeholders have the courage and boldness to start the conversation, the persistence to develop new understandings based on shared responsibility, and the willingness to act on those responsibilities, then every urban system can reach the ambitious but attainable goal that each aspires to: educating at least 98 percent of its students to the highest standards.

Next Steps

Unifying general and special education involves both organizational and conceptual changes in the ways of "doing the system's work." These changes include instituting some practices that are not common in school districts such as developing a shared practice of inquiry, gathering appropriate data, using that information to make difficult decisions, and then carefully monitoring the impact of those decisions based on agreed-upon indicators of change. Those indicators should reflect changes at both the central office and school based levels.

As a starting point, system leaders can begin to ask some key questions:

What does our data tell us?

• Beyond the percentage of students served through special education, what is the race and gender breakdown?
• What is the referral rate? And how do we track referral patterns (by grade level, by presenting issue, etc.)?
• How is this data made public on a regular basis? How and by whom is it discussed and acted upon?
• How is disaggregated subgroup achievement data reviewed and acted upon consistently throughout the system?

How do central office or system leaders perceive their work toward schools?

• How are schools being given appropriate support beyond compliancedriven mandates?
• How are curriculum initiatives and professional development planned for and executed jointly by general and special education drivers?
• To what extent are new reform efforts discussed and "rolled out" in ways that include all the key players around the table from the onset?

How do school-based leaders develop collective responsibility for all students?

• How are literacy and math programs studied and selected for use in the school so that staff capacity is being built broadly and deeply to work with all students?
• How are inclusive practices planned for, not only among students, but among the adults working in the school?
• How are principals supported in the supervision and evaluation of all staff – both general and special education service providers?

As the work to respond to these initial questions unfolds, lessons will be learned and modifications will be made to truly define what a "unified system looks like and acts like, with a vigilant eye toward results for students as well as the change in practice for the adults who serve them.