What Are The Pros And Cons Of Special Education

Congress intended that no child in need of special education will be excluded from receiving services - even those children with the most severe disabilities. Prior to IDEA, many parents remember being told by school administrators, "We are sorry, we just don't have a program for her. She is too severely disabled." The parents had no recourse. Now, all children with disabilities between the ages of three and 21 are entitled to educational services. Most states provide early intervention services to children between birth and three. (Parent Educational Advocacy Training Center, 2017)

Indeed, some research indicates that if a child who reads slowly has IQ scores that are above average, that child might receive services under IDEA based on the discrepancy between the IQ scores and the reading ability. On the other hand, another child who also reads slowly but has IQ scores that are average may not receive any services because of the lack of a significant discrepancy. Such approaches to assessment may clearly result in some children who need services not getting them while others who do not need them will receive them” (Pasternack, 2002).

The two options for identifying students with disabilities are RTI model and the IQ-Achievement discrepancy model. The RTI model is a multi-tiered approach to identifying students with disabilities. With this approach the amount of students who are identified as having a learning disability has decreased because of the support students receive at different tiers and it eliminates inadequate instruction as the reason for reading problems. Universal screening and high quality teaching is done for all students. Students who show that they need additional help receive tier 1 services where frequency and intensity increases. Students are monitored and receive research based instruction in the general education classroom. Some students may still struggle and have to receive more intensive and frequent service. Those students will receive supplemental support from an educational professional. Tier 3 services are provided to students who still struggle and need even more intensive service. Students may also qualify for special education services. The IQ-Achievement discrepancy model is used to determine if a disability is present. Standardized tests are used to eliminate low intellectual ablity as a determining cause for reading problems. With this model, a professional assess whether there is a discrepancy between a student’s scores on an iq test and scores obtained from areas

The pros and cons of the inclusion of special education students in the public school system.

When Public Law 94-142 was passed in 1975 it had a positive impact on the education for children with disabilities. Millions of children in the United States were supported by the law. These children had previously been excluded entirely from the education system.

If parents, teachers, and other professionals discover a child's learning disability early and provide the right kind of help, it can give the child a chance to develop skills needed to lead a successful and productive life. The LD online website provides a long list of characteristics that might indicate a learning disability between the ages of Kindergarten and high school. Some common signs of a learning disability that as a teacher we can look for in the classroom would be, a student speaks later than most children, pronunciation problems, slow vocabulary growth, student is often unable to find the right word, difficulty rhyming words, trouble learning numbers, alphabet, colors, and shapes, extremely restless and easily distracted, trouble interacting with peers, difficulty following directions or routines, and lastly the fine motor skills are slow to develop. Once the teacher or parents can understand what type of learning disability a child has they can help them succeed academically by providing instruction better and understanding the person

Inclusion is the act of having students with disabilities and abled body students in the same classroom. In concept this has many benefits not only for the students but it also saves time and money for the school, however in practice I do not think inclusion works the way it was hoped to. Inclusion in theory will put light strain on the classroom because of safe guards such as helper teachers are in place to help out. In my experience these teachers are in the way most of the time when students are trying to learn, and students feel cheated when the special needs students are handed a supplemented test making the students feel bad. Lastly that the pros of inclusion in the classroom are set in perfect conditions with good teachers on both sides special education and general education, however most of the time that is not the case.

Though all three criteria must be met, during diagnosis emphasis is placed on the individual’s level of intellectual impairment. In order to determine this, IQ tests such as the Wechsler intelligence scale are completed and the results used to determine if an individual has a learning disability. A person is deemed to have a learning disability if on these IQ tests they score below 70.

When some people think of someone with a learning disability they often think of someone who is not able to contribute to society. It is often assumed people with learning disabilities are people who have low intelligence, work the school systems, and are socially awkward. As someone who has a learning disability these misconceptions have made it difficult for me to be open about it and prove these stereotypes wrong. Most of these misconceptions stem from people not understanding what alearning disabilities are, a learning disability “results from a difference in the way a person's brain is wired. Children with learning disabilities are as smart or smarter than their peers. But they have difficulty reading, writing, spelling, reasoning, recalling and/or organizing information if left to figure things out by themselves or if taught in conventional ways” (idonline.org).

In order for a student to be diagnosed for any disability, there is a process that involves many people that are important in the child’s life. The school must conduct tests that measure the child’s academic success in the classroom, as well as tests that measure IQ (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children), work samples, developmental history (usually get this information from the parents), physical exams (vision, hearing etc.), psychological tests, adaptive skills (BASC) and other areas as needed. Testing is usually done by professionals from various disciplines. In order to qualify for special education services under IDEA, the disability must impact the child’s ability to be academically successful (IDEA, 2004).

Students can be identified as having a learning disability by using a process based on their response to research-based interventions along with an IQ-achievement discrepancy. These scientific, research-based interventions, which are tiered approaches to school based service delivery, are generally known or called response-to-intervention (RtI) models. RtI models are early intervention approaches that involve children’s responses to evidence-based interventions which are implemented on three different levels of intensity. To achieve prevention goals, RTI schools are structured, arranged, staffed, and lead differently than traditional schools. Along with using a tiered approach, schools that use RtI models also use progress monitoring. They use a vital flow chart of students, within and across tiers of services, to maintain a positive response to intervention. School-wide RtI is characterized by multiple tiers of risk and support. Students within RtI schools are considered to be placed across three, sometimes four, tiers of risk ranging from no risk to very high level of risk. There is no right or wrong amount of tiers schools can use, but the majority of schools use a three tier system. The expectation of Tier 1 is that about 80% of students will be making expected progress in

The first step in any research is to accurately define the population of interest. Intellectual Disability (ID) has been called by many different terms: mental retardation, learning disability, mental handicap, and developmentally delayed. Generally, these terms are accepted as interchangeable (Schalock, Luckasson & Shogren, 2007). However, over time some of the characteristics required to receive a diagnosis of ID has changed. In the recent past, the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Metal Disorders Text Revised (DSM IV TR) identified three criteria necessary to be diagnosed with ID. This included: impairments of intellectual functioning (IQ<70) are not necessarily excluded from the diagnosis. By deemphasized the importance of low IQ the as a defining feature of ID the diagnosis expanded its definition to include individual assessed with borderline intelligence and above (fact sheet reference).

Those students only have speaking problem and no other kind of disabilities should be expected to be tested just as the others. I have worked with those students that are capable of learning and being tested as the other students. Those students that have learning disabilities can and sometimes retain what they have learned. They can be tested but not the way other students are tested. These students should be made an exception to this rigorous testing. There are other ways to test these students. President Barack Obama has used an executive authority to revise the No Child Left Behind education law, there are factors driving toward the use of student test scores, classroom observation and input from students among other measures how to determine (Helfing, 2011). The factors that I have seen in working with Special Education-there have to be different ways of determining what level of disabilities does each disabled student has in order to say that this disabled student can be tested with a standard test as the non-disabled student. This will be an appropriate way of determining the ability of that student. The teacher is the one that observes the students and know capabilities of that student. President Obama stated that there are states wanting to get relief from the Bush-era No Child Left Behind law might be able to get a waiver from this law (Hefling, 2011). In Idaho States Department of Education is working on a public

What are the advantages of using the classification of developmental delay for a student referred for early childhood special education services?

On the other study conducted by Waldron, the results show that children with learning disabilities did poor on math compared to children without learning disabilities. Programs to help children with learning disabilities improve in math should be enforce in every school to help these children succeed. The dropout rate on children with learning disabilities was 14.1 percent on a longitudinal study conducted by Doren. The reason for dropouts was that children with learning disabilities felt they were not compatible academically as children without learning disabilities. They felt disadvantaged compared to the other children. This shows that children with learning disabilities are in greater danger to dropping out of school. Programs designated for children with learning disabilities to help them on their reading, math, and writing would drop the rate and help those students graduate