System and School Improvement for Students with Disabilities

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System and School Improvement for Students with
Disabilities

• Margaret J. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
• October 12, 2006

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System and School Improvement Some Assumptions

• The school is the unit of improvement
• Improvement is measured by student performance on
  standardized assessments
• Performance can be reliably measured
• Performance goals are relevant and attainable and
  measured against universal standards

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Basic Improvement Strategies

• Focusing attention on what matters
• Increasing human capacity by changing teachers
  skills behaviors
• Providing access to the same subject matter
  content
• Explicit instruction of students and practitioners

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What Do We Think We Have Learned?
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My Research

• Focus Investigation of the implementation and
  impacts of general education reform policies on
  special education policy and practice
• Duration About two decades
• Study Design Primarily Case Study
• Methods
• Primarily qualitative methodology (i.e.,
  interviews focus groups semi-structured
  classroom observations document review)
• Recently have augmented case studies with
  quantitative analyses of extant data (i.e.,
  state, local, and school level reported data)
• Descriptive research using large-scale national
  data sest (e.g., ECLS SEELS, SPENSE,NLTS2)

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Key Themes Emerging from the Findings

• Distinct eras of special education emerge
• 1980s Catch up and refinement of PL 94-142
• Early 1990s Solidify Separate System
• Mid 1990s The Inclusion Years
• 2001-present The No Child Left Behind Years

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Evolving Special Education

• Solidifying the Separate System
• Focus is on uniform implementation of a complex
  law
• Special education is solidified as a separate
  program with its own policy goals and practices
  within school systems
• Special education is defined, managed and
  delivered by special educators
• General education begins to tinker with reform
  theories and standards movement begins
• Standards dominate general education
  conversation
• Special education begins the inclusion movement

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Evolving Special Education

• The Inclusion Years
• Assessments and accountability hit schools and
  general education teachers begin to lose control
  over curriculum pedagogy
• Inclusion remains the dominant focus within
  special education keeping students with
  disabilities in the taught curriculum not
  standards is the policy goal
• Special educators maintain control over special
  education through the IEP
• Participation in state assessments emerges as a
  policy goal not a means to an end for special
  education

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Evolving Special Education

• The NCLB Years
• Accountability hits special education and
  special educators begin to lose control over the
  IEP
• General educators become acutely aware of
  students with disabilities
• Improving test scores not just participating in
  assessments becomes the policy goal
• Providing access to standard-based subject matter
  content becomes essential...and
• Special education begins to grapple with its
  identity

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What Have We Learned?

• Some schools consistently achieve better than
  expected results for students with disabilities
  but quantifying school-level performance is
  difficult due to fluctuations due to size of the
  subpopulation
• School-level performance of students with
  disabilities tends to mirror that of other
  sub-groups all subgroups go up BUT they may not
  close the gap in performance

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What Are We Learning About Good Schools?

• What do we see inside good schools?
• Accountability, not just assessment
  participation, results in increased access to
  standards-based curriculum
• Curriculum is linked to standards and all
  teachers know what is in the curriculum
• General education teachers know what they are to
  teach and how to teach it
• Special education teachers have strong pedagogy
  and work in flexible support roles
• Shared language based on standards reflected in
  the way teachers talk about students with IEPs
• He is just about at the standard so we are
  really focusing on his writing processes this
  year.
• Which achievement standards the student is being
  held to

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What Are We Learning?

• Inside good schools (cont.)
• Teachers express a strong sense of collective
  responsibility in the school shared
  expectations for improving school performance
• Collaboration occurs around what and how to teach
  the large chunks of the intended curriculum
• Flexible, almost informal, communication and
  problem solving strategies
• Leadership is shared

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Implications for Improvement Initiatives

• There needs to be an organizing framework for
  improvement efforts that guides resource
  allocation models professional development
  activities, and other capacity building
  frameworks that focus on the school as the unit
  of improvement
• WHAT ARE WE BUILDING?

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Inside Good Schools Special Education Supports a
Curriculum Continuum
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Implications (cont.)

• Build organizational capacity
• Staff to support a continuum of access
• Investigate scheduling models
• Design flexible and fluid models of collaboration
  and support
• Build teacher capacity
• Provide training on curriculum as well as subject
  matter content
• Increase skill in matching instruction to content
  demands
• Provide opportunities for teachers to reflect on
  current practice and new demands