WASHINGTON – Many children in special education classes may not belong there, the government says.
A new policy is aimed at intervening early with intensive teaching to give struggling students a chance to succeed in regular classrooms and escape the “special ed” label.
There are nearly seven million special education students in the United States, and roughly half have learning disabilities. Most of those are reading related, such as dyslexia or problems in processing information.
The Bush administration, following passage of a broad special education law, issued rules in October that rewrote the way schools determine if a child has a learning disability.
States have largely relied on a 1970s-era method that looks for disparities between a child’s IQ and achievement scores.
“The fundamental concept here is unexpected underachievement,” said Tom Hehir, a special education expert at Harvard University. He said a child with a normal IQ who is lagging behind in learning would generally be identified as having a learning disability.
Such a diagnosis often is made around fourth grade. At younger ages IQ tests are seen as less reliable, and it often takes that long for severe achievement problems to become apparent.
But that, critics say, is a wait-to-fail approach. They point to research showing that intervening early can make it easier for children to overcome their problems.
Under the new rules, states can no longer rely solely on the IQ-vs.-achievement method. Instead the guidelines give states more latitude, allowing them, for example, to observe how well children respond to intensive instruction in the subjects where they’re having problems.
The new federal rules also make another important change: they allow schools for the first time to use up to 15 percent of their special education funds to provide the required early intervention. That could help reduce the number of children who ultimately are labeled as learning disabled.
Schools nationwide get roughly $11 billion a year in federal money for special education.
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