Districts considering Oregon model should read terms carefully

Districts considering Oregon model should read terms carefully

In the last issue of The Special EducatorŽ, attorney Miriam K. Freedman responded to seven recommendations within Oregon's Blue Ribbon Panel Report that she says pose considerable concern for the special education community. Oregon reached a settlement with disability advocates that adopted some, but not all, of the panel's recommendations about accommodations and new procedures for statewide tests for students with learning disabilities. "It appears that while the settlement may be well meaning, it is misguided in its efforts to help children with disabilities over the long- term," Freedman says. "It may undermine current efforts to raise academic standards for all students." In the article below, Freedman explores implications outside Oregon, should the 20-page settlement be considered a model for other states. States and school districts considering it a model should read it carefully and consider its implications, intended and unintended, she said. By Miriam K. Freedman*

One reason the recent Oregon settlement is unprecedented may be that it contains many provisions that are not legally required. ( See The Special Educator Ž, Feb 9 and 23, 2001) Of the panel's five members, hired by both parties to reach the settlement, none represented regular educators or general curriculum developers. This is of great concern.

The settlement does not consider the relationship of assessment procedures for students with learning disabilities (or any other disability group) to those used by their non-disabled peers in the general curriculum and regular education classes. It also does not consider the concerns of regular educators.

No law or legal precedent stipulates that tests cannot assess skills in the areas of the students' disabilities. Yet, this agreement does. Oregon has to devise some other means -- such as alternate assessment or alternate "scoring" for the student -- so the disability is not directly tested. How can testing skills such as the "3 R's" be deemed discriminatory? If children do not have the skills, what type of alternate assessment or scoring can demonstrate them?

The Oregon settlement equires that accommodations be allowed on statewide tests if local teams establish them on the student's IEP or 504 plan -- unless Oregon can show the accommodations invalidate the test.

In so doing, it confuses the roles of the IEP team and the state's test producer. By long established law, a test producer (the state, in this case) is required to establish valid tests (testing what they purport to measure), and to notify all parties of accommodations that are allowed and those not allowed.

Instead, Oregon will have to prove the negative on a case-by-case basis, for which a detailed appeals procedure is provided. Rather than providing notice to stakeholders of what accommodations are allowed, it will have to "show" why other accommodations, developed by individual teams, are not allowed. And, when it disallows accommodations for individual students, Oregon will have to develop alternate testing, scoring, etc., so the students can meet state standards. How this works within a system focused on high standards for all students is not explained.

A state has the responsibility and right to educate its students and to measure what stakeholders -- educators, parents and policy makers -- want taught and tested. By the 60-plus set of new conditions, procedures and bureaucracy that are briefly highlighted and summarized here, this settlement compromises that right and responsibility in Oregon. Let the dialogue among all stakeholders -- including regular educators -- begin!

*Miriam K. Freedman is an attorney representing school districts. She is currently on leave from the law firm Stoneman, Chandler & Miller LLP in Boston.

Oregon Study Cites Perceived Benefits Supported Education Portland State University, in conjunction with the Oregon Education Department, has completed case studies of 15 elementary, middle and high schools in Oregon to look at schools implementing "Supported Education."

According to Dr. Joel Arick, project director at Portland State, who shared preliminary results of the study with Inclusive Education Programs, supported education is defined in the study as special education staff and related service staff supporting students with disabilities in more regular classroom environments. "While the state calls it supported education, the result is inclusion for a lot of kids," he said. "It doesn't mean every school has every kid included--it means a lot more inclusion, with special ed teachers in regular classes."

Among the areas measured by the Supported Education Study were the perceptions of inservice training, the perception of the level and type of support provided to students with IEPs in the regular class, the perceived effects of including students with IEPs on the teacher's instructional style, and the perceived benefits and negative outcomes for students with and without IEPs as a result of inclusion. Perceptions of parents of children with and without IEPs were also studied. Among the preliminary data, several trends emerged:

The majority of parents, teachers and staff indicated that the social interaction of non-IEP students and students with IEPs increases in a supported education class at both the elementary/middle and high school levels. Elementary school teachers and staff indicated a need for training in individual student practices like problem-solving, student planning, and transition planning; A majority of elementary school teachers and staff said there was a need for training in supported education classroom practices like instructional strategies and classroom management. In the elementary and middle schools, positive effects of supported education on classroom management was reported by 40 percent of the regular educators, 70 percent of the special educators and more than 50 percent of the support staff. These numbers were considerably lower in the high school data. In the high schools, supported education was seen as having a positive effect on collaboration between regular and special education staff by 60 percent of the regular educators, 100 percent of the special educators, and more than 80 percent of the support staff surveyed.

Arick and his colleagues -- Dr. Dave Krug and Dr. Ruth Falco at Portland State and Pat Jackson, Nancy Anderson and Karen Brazeau of the Oregon Department of Education -- selected nine schools in a stratified random sample to get urban and rural, large and small schools across the state. Interviews and surveys were conducted on the perceptions of special education and regular education teachers, as well as the parents of IEP and non-IEP students. Direct observations of students were also made.

The level of supported education among the schools in the study ranged from schools with no self-contained classes and special education teachers teaching in regular classes, to 10 percent of the special education students placed in a self-contained class outside their neighborhood school.

According to Arick, the positive attitudes of regular educators was one of the most surprising outcomes of the study.

"They would tell us that this is the thing that kept them from burning out, seeing these kidsĆ positive progress."

Also surprising was the perceived social competency gains in non-IEP students. In addition, combined school data showed that students with IEPs were being accepted socially.

The next phase will involve direct student outcomes.

To evaluate outcomes, Arick and his colleagues are devising a three-point system of portfolio assessment; student assessment data in academic, social and functional areas; and school records evaluation to gauge attendance, grades and disciplinary issues.