*** American School Speech Pathology Blog***

The Girl with a Pearl Earring , Johannes Vermeer. Oil on canvas, 1665, Mauritshuis Museum.

Celebrating 100 years of School Speech-Language Pathology: 1910-2010

Dr. John M. Panagos, Editor

panagosssp@gmail.com

John M. Panagos in Marseilles France near the sea.

I love this blog! I just found it and will be back.

Keep up the good work.” Lisa

Thank you all.  This site is one place where the ideas can be openly debated with full participation!  No Sign Up, No Cost!  A public service.

We are happy to report visitors from 97 different countries of the world.

May 4, 1970: Speech Pathology Student Shot at Kent State

Sandra Lee Scheuer

Sandra Lee Scheuer was killed by the Ohio National Guard as she returned to her dormitory shortly after noon on May 4, 1970. At 10:00 a.m. she attended her “Language Acquisition and Behavior”  class taught by assistant professor Dr. John M. Panagos, and stayed in the Speech and Hearing Clinic in the Music-Speech Building until leaving to return to her dormitory.

” She was shot through the throat with an M-1 rifle from a distance of 130 yards (119 m) while walking between classes and died within five or six minutes from loss of blood. According to the account of Bruce Burkland, a close family friend, Scheuer “was walking with one of her speech and hearing therapy students across the green. Neither Sandra nor the young man had anything to do with the assembly of students on the green.”^{[1]” (Wikipedia)}

Sandra was a respected student and well liked, a credit to her chosen field of speech-language pathology.

ASHA Board of Directors and School Common Core State Standards?

We now see enthusiastic  articles directed at school SLPs to get on board with Common Core Standards now being adopted for schools across the U. S.

Barbara J. Ehren, Jean Blosser, Froma P. Roth, Diane R. Paul and Nickola W. Nelson in their article,  ask, “Are you ready for the Common Core State Standards?

http://www.asha.org/Publications/leader/2012/120403/Core-Commitment/

The answer is YES and the answer is NO!

Yes, if you are a practicing school SLP who has been dealing with standards for years.  Speech and language intervention is easily related to academic standard by way of pro forma minimal entries on IEP forms.  Before No Child Left Behind standards were in place SLPs were following standards.   As to collaboration, it has been a legal requirement since  1975.

No, if you are a student just graduating and think your MA degree covers standards.  Academic programs do not include sufficient curricular information to cover important school topics.  Recent graduates are left on their own to educate themselves.  Collaboration is treated as a token topic.

According to ASHA, the Board of Directors represent school SLPs:

“The Board of Directors is the single governing body of the Association and actively promotes the objectives of the Association, operating in accordance with and administering and implementing the programs and policies established by the Bylaws and by the Board of Directors. Members of the Board of Directors are elected to serve by and are accountable to the members of the Association. Members can use a special formto contact the Board of Directors.”

We predict the Board of Directors will do nothing about this important trend in education to make sure academic centers are preparing SLPs appropriately.

In so many areas of school support ASHA administrators engage in magical thinking — getting the word out to the membership is sufficient to solve the problem.  Five years of work are needed to change over academic programs to support school SLP graduates.  How in the world is the over use of pull-out intervention going to change by simply pointing out the problem?

Sisyphus, Poster Child for American Education

I went to Barnes and Noble bookstore the other day.  It seemed time to look over their shelf on “Education” to find trending books.  I bought Diane Ravitch’s, The Death and Life of the Great American School System (Basic Books, 2010) because it was on my read list.  The shelf was like the many I had seen before in bookstores across the country.  It was loaded with brightly colored “how to” books.

French children near the sea.

Most of us in education never reach the mountain top because we are too busy searching for the perfect method.

According to Ravich, at the top of the mountain is the pantheon of politically inspired non-educators seeking to make changes in things they do not understand.  We keep  climbing hoping we find the perfect method.

Diane Ravitch’s blog

Diane Ravitch Defends Education on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb1Lsod2nts

School Identification of Autism: Over-Identification

Journalists report significant public debate and awareness over the growing numbers of children identified medically as autistic.  In the 1940s of course the condition was just being discovered and therefore was under-identified in U. S. schools.  Now school psychologists, speech-language pathologists and special educators must fight through all the issues mentioned in the press.  The implication is that autism is now being over-identified in U. S. schools.  A recent conference reported out the following:

“Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are estimated to occur among about 1% of children in the U.S. This is in line with estimates from other industrialized countries. However, the identified prevalence of ASDs has increased significantly in a short time period based on data from multiple studies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM)”

Network (http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/addm.html).

http://www.cdc.gov/NCBDDD/autism/documents/EvaluatingChanges_ExecutiveSummary.pdf  / Centers for Disease Control and Prevention  Tom Harkin Global Communications Center | 1600 Clifton Road, N.E. | Atlanta, Georgia

Right now identification is being driven by medical diagnostic theories and protocols, a confound for proper special education identification in schools.  The use of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-5, sets up a conflict of epistemology as to school special education placement decisions.

Epistemology  is “… the study or a theory of the nature and grounds of knowledge especially with reference to its limits and validity…” A question is whether “…the primary task of epistemology is to provide justifications for broad categories of knowledge claim or merely to describe what kinds of things are known and how that knowledge is acquired.”  Merriam-Webster online.

Diagnosis based solely on medical criteria is invalid for educational decisions for reasons we have pointed out routinely (i.e., diagnostic “dualism”*).  Not all autistic individuals  qualify for special education, and some succeed at post-secondary institutions.

Medical diagnosis can be a negative factor in a child’s life because of the high respect educators and parents have for medical personnel.  The risks are:

1.  The child is  automatically put in special education based on medical criteria only;

2. The nature of the placement as to least restrictive environment and intensity is distorted for optimal learning until high school graduation;

3. The child receives the social stigma of the labels “special education pupil” and “autism;”

4. Instruction is less demanding when special education placements are made;

5. Isolated instruction reduces opportunities for social communication, a featural deficit of autism.

6. Autistic pupils are often retained indefinitely in special education whether assistance is needed or not;

7. Expectations for high school graduation are reduced by special education status.

8. Medical diagnosticians do not follow through on the long-term educational implications of medical diagnosis, such as attending yearly IEP meetings.

9. Medical assessments do not include “dynamic assessment” in the vein of Response to Intervention.

Astute parents often learn that their autism spectrum children can do things the experts didn’t predict.

*”In philosophy of mind, dualism is the assumption that mental phenomena are, in some respects, non-physical,^[1] or that the mind and body are not identical.^[2] Thus, it encompasses a set of views about the relationship between mind and matter, and is contrasted with other positions, such asphysicalism, in the mind–body problem.^{[1][2]”  Wikipedia}   

American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Mission

Under Revision….

There is currently discussion among the leaders of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association about the mission of the organization.

 

 

Effective advocacy requires knowledge of existing law, pending legislation, and the political players and processes as well as the unmet needs of constituents. 

 

file:///Users/user/Desktop/The%20Arc%20%7C%20Public%20Policy.webarchive

Special Education Over-identification: A Parent Speaks

Naomi Boyle On January 3, 2013 at 12:54 pm

Dear Dr. Panagos:

I am delighted to hear that you are considering writing a book on the issue of over-identification of disabilities in schools. I am a parent who sold a house to move out of a school district so that my child would not become what I call a “victim of over-identification.” I have heard of several parents who have done likewise. Several years have passed since we made that move, but the mission was accomplished, and it was a decision I never regretted.

But sadly there are many parents that quite frankly don’t have a clue. They become convinced by the study teams that their child is “special.” They become convinced by the bio-psychiatry industry that the underlying problem has nothing to do with the environment and can only be attributed to some not so well defined, ever changing, subjectively diagnosed, alleged, biological cause outside of their control. The parents have no idea of the funding incentives that encourage schools to engage in over-identification. In fact the phrase “over-identification” hasn’t even entered into their vocabularly. Not only do parents have no clue about how IDEA funding works, they haven’t even heard about the Medicaid and third-party reimbursement profits school districts view as limitless revenue streams. In my opinion, a book educating America on over-identification is sorely needed.

Schools often cite their IDEA numbers to convince the public that there has not been an increase in “identified” students. Of course those numbers are limited by Congressional Act and almost every school is at or near the max if not slightly over. But we never hear how many students are placed on 504 plans, or a “mini IEP.” or an IEP “for related services only,” or an “individul health plan” or on a “functional behavior plan. ” I have talked to many parents whose kids are on non-IDEA plans of some sort or another and because the parents don’t understand education law, they are just as convinced that their child has a disability as are the parents of children placed on full fledged IDEA IEPs that the school districts cite as their “special education” population. The consequence is that the psychological damage for these inappropriately placed children can be just as grave. I hope your book addresses these victims of over-identification as well.

You state that you would like to address the issue of disproportionality in special education. When I taught elementary general music many moons ago in Southwest rural Georgia, I witnessed first hand true “disportionaltiy.” The district’s African American population was approximately 30% but when I walked into the EMR classrooms somehow I was seeing classes that were approximately 90% African American. But years later when I had my own child and enrolled her in a public elementary school in a middle class suburb in Johnson County, Kansas, I witnessed something much different. The school had only 1-2% of the students on free and reduced lunch, and demographically it had a white, non-Hispanic population in excess of 95% (and most of the other 5% were Asian). Yet I noticed on the school’s website that there were 13 special education paras on staff in a little elementary school with only 400 students, and team meetings occuring in the fall every morning and every afternoon in the glass conference room adjacent to the principal’s office. I can’t call that disproportionality, it appeared to me that it could only be called pure unadulterated over-identification. Yet, many experts in the field speak of disproportionality as if it is synonymous with the phrase “over-identification,” and I can tell you based on my experiences it is not. I think the best way to describe disproportionality is as a sub-set of over-identification.

Please in the name of the millions of children in this country currently and about to become “victims of over-identification” write this book. Perhaps a good title would be “Over-Identification Awareness.” And I will say a prayer when it comes time for you to find a publisher.

Library of Congress, via CBS News: “Child labor photos from 1911
The child labor photos Lewis Hine took in the early 1900s were meant to shock Americans into reforming child labor laws. Decades later, many of these photos are getting a fresh look, thanks to one man’s efforts to link the subjects to their living relatives. This photo taken in Winchendon, Mass., in Sept. 1911, shows Mamie Laberge at her workstation. She is under the legal work age. 

Caption information from “The Library of Congress.”

Dr. John Panagos and a Book on Over-identification

I am thinking I must take up book-writing in order to sharpen up the study of disproportionality and special education over-identification.  It forces upon us logical analysis not easily captured by blog posts.  Blogging is a good technique for gathering and defining.

The essence of my story is that it has taken me several years to sort out how education works, including the history of it, and including the politics of it.

Stop sign along country road.

Working in Arizona schools as a professional speech-language pathologist gave me an initial template but brought out other questions I could not answer.  Again, reading history shakes our beliefs in “official policy.”  Well-intentioned “leaders” think they are “innovative” but they are simply repeating the past.

The strongest point is we work in government schools.  What is the agenda of government schools, to create informed citizens for good democracy?  No, and it never has been except in elite schools where rich people send their kids.  A close look at congressional committees tells us school policy is hand and glove with labor issues.  When we needed men to run lathes during the industrial revolution we decided to take young Irish boys out of the  coal mines of Kentucky and educate them. When our school children talk slang and have bad accents we promote “speech correction” teaching.  Lurching federal labor policies pull local education off course.

The fly in the ointment was the enactment of compulsory education, setting the stage for the illegal exclusion of minority children and handicapped children. Elite educators fought like crazy to keep them out of government schools until Brown v Board of Education forced the issue.  Schools became the battlefield for national politics.  Special education after 1975 provided another technique for excluding children with government school classrooms.

The “standards movement” leading up to  No Child Left Behind was a political reaction to the loss of the elitist agenda.   “At-risk” school children of course were pushed around by the need to pass “tests” even when they were dropping out of government schools like misfits.

The history of special education is in fact a great success story when one looks back to 1940 when state laws prevented handicapped persons from going to school because they were “too dangerous.”  The IDEA Child Find Requirement as an extension of Compulsory Education was a constitutional high point in American education.

How well schools manage the education of “struggling pupils” has much to do with the overall success of American schools.  Sure, our scores would be higher if we excluded them.  We could put deaf children in special schools and  hyperactive pupils in asylums. We could send all indians to indian schools or Oklahoma.  We could place black  children in their own school buildings down the road by the smokestacks.  We could send all Mexican children back home.  We could  round-up Japanese children and put them in camps as we once did.  We could put “retarded” pupils in “self-contained” classrooms in old buildings.  We could send troublesome children to “detention” on the way to prison.  We could even cook up some charter school arrangements where special education excellence via child find is an after thought.

Or we could face that we wrote the U. S. Constitution and we are stuck with it.

The most interesting thing I have read to date is “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative For Educational Reform (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ A_Nation_at_Risk)….the 1983 report of American President Ronald Reagan‘s National Commission on Excellence in Education.  Its publication is considered a landmark event in modern American educational history ” (Wiki).

As influential Americans railed about sinking academic performance, nothing was said about the enactment of Public Law 94-157 in 1975 forcing schools to take handicapped children as a matter of constitutional rights.  The compulsory education chickens had come home to roost.  Of course performance had to sink.  The bell shape curve had been truncated.

For professionals, the realization many Americans do not want to have “disadvantaged” children in the classroom is where the disproportionality issue begins.  It is not a problem of enhancing assessment skills or sending federal advisories to state departments of education.  It is about the cultural history of American schools and blindness to the problem.

Awareness of Special Education Over-identification

Our work here suggests a good part of the U. S. problem of special education over-identification of at risk and non-disabled minority children (disproportionality) is a lack of everyday awareness among school personnel.  Where schools make a good-faith effort to dig into the problem objectivity and skill develop.

Main road in Lakeside, Arizona, in the White Mountains

For example, Nicole Ely reports on an interesting finding in the San Rafael City Schools schools (California) on the identification of “emotionally disturbed” children.  http://sanrafael.patch.com/

The state found a disproportional number of white students classified as emotionally disturbed. “Because of the disparity, the district will have to review its policies and procedures and will be required to reserve 15 percent, or $100,000, of their special education funds for coordinated intervening services to prevent over identification of students.”

The district had worked hard to minimize over-placement of minority children but this finding was a true surprise.  ”Our staff does a really good job with the assessment,” [Miss Amy] Baer said. “[Because of the amount of students already identified by other districts] it’s difficult for the high school district to fix this.”

The article identifies one reason for over-identification when one district sends a pupil to another with a legally binding IEP.  Still the new school staff needs to check these transfers to see if the assessments are valid.

Education and Special Education Disproportionality

For those who do not grasp the problem of disproportionality of minority placements in special education, an excellent reference document has been published by the National Education Association, called Truth in Labeling : Disproportionality in Special Education (2007).

http://www.nccrest.org/Exemplars/Disporportionality_Truth_In_Labeling.pdf

It is an excellent basic document but does not go far enough to place the problem into the “larger context.”  It is now evident that, with respect to black children, most of their formal experiences are disproportional.  They are more likely to be placed in detention and some black leaders state school and community miscatagorizations are the gateway to prison, where disproportionality is also a problem.  Foster care statistics show the same pattern.

Now the NEA five years later needs to call for some kind of accountability.  It is not enough simply to identify the problem.

 ”“We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race […] deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does.” – U.S. Supreme Court, Brown v. Board of Education(1954)”

http://urbanyouthjustice.wordpress.com/2011/05/12/special-education-means-no-education-for-many-youth-of-color/