James M. Kauffman

How We Might Achieve the Radical Reform of Special Education

Special education is experiencing great pressures toward change. We face three immediate tasks created by these pressures: keeping the issue of place in perspective, choosing idea over image, and avoiding fanaticism. To achieve substantive reform, we must disaggregate special education populations, repair and elaborate our conceptual foundations, and strengthen our empirical base. Lasting change is more likely to be achieved by persistent, mundane, but carefully chosen activities than by fashionable actions and images of radical reform.

Verbal rehearsal and selective attention in children with learning disabilities: a developmental lag.

Abstract To investigate the development of verbal rehearsal strategies and selective attention in learning disabled children, Hagens Central-Incidental task was administered to younger learning disabled (M CA = 8.68 years) and normal (M CA = 8.62 years) boys in Experiment 1 and to intermediate (M CA = 10.18 years) and older (M CA = 13.48 years) learning disabled boys in Experiment 2. Also, in Experiment 2, an experimentally induced verbal rehearsal condition was included to determine its effects on serial recall and selective attention performance. In Experiment 1, the serial postion curve of the normals revealed both a primacy and a recency effect, whereas that of the learning disabled revealed a recency effect only. In Experiment 2, both the intermediate and the older learning disabled exhibited both primacy and recency effects under both standard and rehearsal conditions. A developmental analysis of central recall for the three learning disabled groups revealed constant age-related increases in overall central recall and in primacy recall. That the normals recalled more central, but not more incidental, information than the learning disabled in Experiment 1 suggests that the learning disabled are deficient in selective attention. Correlational findings suggest that the selective attention of the learning disabled improves with age. The results were interpreted as support for the hypothesis of a developmental lag in the learning disabled population.

How We Prevent the Prevention of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

Popular rhetoric supports prevention, but action does not match the rhetoric. Legitimate concerns are promoted to primacy, precluding preventive action. Prevention may be thwarted by expressing overriding concern for labels and stigma, objecting to a medical model and failure-driven services, preferring false negatives to false positives, proposing a paradigm shift, calling special education ineffective, misconstruing the least restrictive and least intrusive intervention, protesting the percentage of children receiving services, complaining that special education already costs too much, maintaining developmental optimism, denouncing disproportional identification, defending diversity, and denying or dodging deviance. The mechanisms explaining the avoidance of prevention include delayed negative reinforcement of prevention, immediate positive reinforcement of competing behaviors, social punishment of prevention, and modeling. Implications for practice are suggested.

Arguable Assumptions Underlying the Regular Education Initiative

Many suggestions of advocates of the Regular Education Initiative (REI) find broad support among educators. Several basic assumptions underlying the REI, however, are arguable. Contrary to advocates of the REI, we argue the following: (1) Students are not overidentified for special education, and the gap between regular and special education is not widening. (2) Student failure should not be attributed solely to shortcomings of teachers. (3) Teachers who are more competent do not necessarily have more positive attitudes toward handicapped or difficult-to-teach students being placed in their classrooms, nor does school reform/school improvement necessarily mean that difficult-to-teach or handicapped students will be instructed more effectively. (4) Variability in student performance will increase, not decrease, when the most effective instruction is provided for all students, such that low performing students will become more rather than less obvious, and their stigma will not be avoided. (5) Teachers are always faced with the dilemma of maximizing mean performance versus minimizing group variance, such that protection of identifiable resources for identifiable low performing students is always necessary.

Labels, Categories, Behaviors: Ed, Ld, and Emr Reconsidered

Children traditionally labeled learning disabled, mildly emotionally disturbed, and mildly mentally retarded are considered within a behavioral rather than a categorical framework. A historical analysis reveals that the three areas have evolved from highly similar foundations. In addition, no behavioral characteristics can be found that are associated exclusively with any one of the three areas. Children who are usually identified as learning disabled, mildly disturbed, or mildly retarded reveal more similarities than differences. Consequently, successful teaching techniques do not differ among the three areas. A noncategorical orientation is recommended in which children are grouped for instruction according to their specific learning deficits rather than their assignment to traditional categories.

Commentary: Today's Special Education and Its Messages for Tomorrow

Ten characterizations of contemporary special education and five major implications for the future of the field are offered. Special education today is characterized as (a) ignorant of history, (b) apologetic for existing, (c) preoccupied with image, (d) lost in space, (e) unrealistic in expectations, (f) unprepared to focus on teaching and learning, (g) unaware of sociopolitical drift, (h) mesmerized by postmodernist/deconstructionist inanities, (i) an easy target for scam artists, and (j) immobilized by anticipation of systemic transformation. The implications are (a) changes in the boundaries of special education, (b) shifts in service delivery patterns and staffing patterns for special educators and in special educations relationship to general education, (c) changes in state standards and patterns of funding for special education and in personnel preparation, (d) additional changes in state and federal legislation and regulation, and (e) possible loss of special educations focus on the scientific understanding of instruction. A final note of optimism is offered, as special education is a relatively young profession with a history that includes reliable research and considerable capacity for self-correction. We could turn our attention unambiguously and forcefully to empirical research—generating reliable common knowledge of effective instruction of students with disabilities.

Special Education Implications of Point and Cumulative Prevalence for Children With Emotional or Behavioral Disorders

Prevalence of children with emotional or behavioral disorders (EBD) is a critical component in the discussion of underidentification of children served in special education. This discussion has previously focused almost exclusively on point prevalence or the number of children with EBD presumably needing services at any single point in time. Cumulative prevalence, on the other hand, is the number of children who have had EBD at some point in their lives before high school graduation. In the authors’ review of both types of prevalence, they found that estimates of the latter far exceed those of the former, significantly highlighting the service gap that exists between prevalence estimates and special education identification. Even when point prevalence is limited just to children with moderate or severe disorder, special education identification in the emotional disturbance category appears restricted to less than the bottom tenth of all children in need. Implications for special education are discussed, including issues around underidentification, misidentification, underservice, and related issues concerning children with EBD.

Characteristics of Students Placed in Special Programs for the Seriously Emotionally Disturbed.

Subjects studied were 249 seriously emotionally disturbed students (204 boys, 45 girls) ranging in age from 7 to 19 years. Data included 10. teachers estimate of academic performance in core academic areas, amount of time spent in regular classes or other educational placements, and scores on the Quay-Peterson Behavior Problem Checklist. The sample was below average in IQ and estimated academic achievement. Approximately one-half of the sample were placed for part of the day in regular classes. Those with higher IQs tended to be placed more often in mainstream settings, but academic achievement estimates and type of behavior problem were not clearly related to placement. IQ and academic achievement estimates were significantly related, but IQ was predictive of neither the amount nor the kind of problem behavior. However, BPC factor score was related to estimated reading achievement, poor reading performance was related to high scores on Conduct Disorder and Socialized Delinquency, and high estimated academic performance was related to Personality Problem and Inadequacy-Immaturity. Implications of the findings for prevalence estimates and composition of special education programs for seriously emotionally disturbed students are discussed.

SELF-MONITORING OF ATTENTION AS A TREATMENT FOR A LEARNING DISABLED BOY'S OFF-TASK BEHAVIOR

A 7-year, 11-month-old, learning disabled boy with attentional problems was taught to self-monitor his on- and off-task behavior by using an audiotape recorder to cue his self-recording. Using a combination of multiple baseline across responses (handwriting and math) and reversal designs, on-task behavior increased dramatically under treatment conditions for both handwriting and math. Academic response rate also increased for handwriting and, especially, math. In an attempt to “wean” the child from possible reliance on the external (tape recorder) signal to self-record, two other treatment conditions were added. The subject was first instructed to self-record without the aid of tape-recorded signals; then, self-recording was discontinued and he was simply to praise himself for being on task. Both conditions led to high levels of on-task behavior and academic output. A one-month followup for math after the experiment found a continued high level of on-task behavior. The relative efficacy of external reinforcement treatments versus more cognitively based approaches such as self-monitoring is discussed.

SELECTIVE ATTENTION AND COGNITIVE TEMPO OF LOW ACHIEVING AND HIGH ACHIEVING SIXTH GRADE MALES

There is much clinical and subjective support for the notion that academic underachievers of normal intelligence (learning disabled children) exhibit both impulsivity and poor attention. This study compared high and low achieving children on two experimental tasks previously designed to measure impulsivity (Kagans MFF) and selective attention (Hagens Central-Incidental Task). Results generated empirical support for more impulsivity and less selective attention in low achievers than high achievers. Results indicated the 2 measures were correlated, suggesting a link between selective attention and cognitive tempo.