Special Education Has Changed Over Time
Special education has been assisting students with learning disabilities in the United States education system since the end of World War II. The first push for special education started when a group of parent-organized advocacy groups surfaced. In 1947 one of the first organizations, the American Association on Mental Deficiency, held its first convention. That marked a starting point for special education as we know it today.
Started during the Civil Rights Movement in the early 1950s, the United Cerebral Palsy Association, the Muscular Dystrophy Association, and John F. Kennedy’s Panel on Mental Retardation were among an increased amount of advocacy groups for assisted learning programs. This strong push helped bring special education into schools across the country in the 1960’s as school access was established for children with disabilities at state and local levels.
The parent advocacy groups dating back to 1947 laid the ground floor for government legislation being approved by Congress in 1975 that was called the “Education for All Handicapped Children Act” (Public Law 94-142). This act went into effect in October of 1977 and it was the beginning for federal funding of special education in schools nationwide. The act required public schools to offer “free appropriate public education” to students with a wide range of disabilities, including “physical handicaps, mental retardation, speech, vision and language problems, emotional and behavioral problems, and other learning disorders.”
The law from 1977 was extended in 1983 to offer parent training and information centers. Later in 1986 the government started programs targeting youngsters with potential learning disabilities. The Act from 1975 was changed to the “Individuals with Disabilities Education Act” (IDEA) in 1990. Since establishment of IDEA more than 6.5 million children and 200,000+ toddlers and infants are being assisted each year.
Special education in schools often unintentionally overlooks a key aspect of why students suffer from learning disabilities. The reasons for common learning disabilities are weak cognitive skills. Studies show that 80% of students enrolled in special education at some level suffer from underlying weak cognitive skills. Cognitive skills are the mental capabilities that one needs to successfully learn academic subjects. In more detail cognitive skills are learning skills used to retain information; process, analyze, and store facts and feelings; and create mental pictures, read words, and understand concepts. They are not to be confused with academic skills which would include subjects like math, science, or history.
Proper testing to identify these weak cognitive skills will help quality learning centers put together a plan of action to strengthen them. This sort of training will last a lifetime. By not targeting the cognitive skills a student will struggle for the rest of their life until they are trained properly. It is highly recommended that you get your child tested at a learning training center that provides cognitive testing. Once tested a personal, unique training program can be developed for your child to overcome their learning disability.
Paul Counts
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I am a school psych working the Chesterfield County Public Schools in Virginia. I currently work in two high schools however I have served in all levels of education. As a devoted disciple of CHC theory and the WJ III, I have administered hundreds of cognitive batteries and have observed the progress, and sometimes lack of progress, of students from elementary school through high school.
I am observing that the cognitive demands for educational progress change over time. Educational demands in elementary school are different from the educational demands in middle school and then in high school. While the academic demands change the eligibility for special education often remains the same. For example, a student may be found eligible for learning disability services because of phonological processing/awareness difficulties in early ES, yet each successive triennial eligibility, and IEP goals, continue to site phonological processing/awareness as the primary disability. (Reading demands of the middle school student are different than the reading demands of the ES student. Reading cognitive demands at the secondary level appear to be related to general knowledge, fluent retrieval of information, working memory, etc). Often subsequent testing focuses on the same disability without consideration for possible changes in educational needs as the student and school demands evolve. I often see students in the high school who continue to have, for example, phonological processing as the primary area of disability even though the student is now able to read fluently and without evidence of decoding difficulty. This phenomenon appears to exist for all disabilities in the cognitive realm. I find that some of my colleagues pursue reevaluation testing looking for any area of weakness regardless of what educational demands may exist. I want to help change this point of view but need research based evidence to back my theories. I believe cognitive testing should focus on the cognitive demands of the student’s environment (education) and developmental level.
I would like to present a workshop/in-service to my colleagues on the achievement demands at each age/grade level and the best practices for identifying weaknesses relative to those demands. I would like to site research evidence to strengthen my arguments. I am needing assistance in find
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