Care Needed in Setting Special-Ed Standards ; As Maine Moves to Standardize the Rules District-to-District, Much is at Stake.

With the possible exceptions of driver’s licenses and dating, there are few things about raising a child more challenging than getting a kid classified as a special-education student.

When a parent or teacher suspects a child may have a learning disability, a Pupil Evaluation Team meeting is convened. The goal of the PET (this is a very acronym-heavy process) is to develop an Individual Education Program (IEP), provided that the child in question qualifies for extra help.

This is determined by what to parents must seem like a small army of education professionals – a teacher, special education instructor, school social worker, principal or vice principal, guidance counselor, district psychologist and the parents are all often present. Looking around the room, a parent can’t be blamed for thinking, “Wow, my kid must be in big trouble.”

A parent might also feel overmatched by people with professional training who have command of all those acronyms. They may not know that qualifying a kid for special-ed services can depend on subjective judgments, the district’s willingness to pay for those programs and just how hard the parent pushes for the help.

In Maine there is a wide disparity district-to-district in the number of students who qualify for special-education services. Some districts have just 7 percent of their students receiving extra help. Some have 30 percent classified as special needs.

While demographics and socio-economic factors can have an impact on how many kids in a district are truly special needs, state education officials doubt those factors can account for a disparity of 23 percentage points.

In an attempt to bring more consistency to special-education services district-to-district, the state Department of Education is proposing statewide standards for deciding which children get special-ed help.

The initiative follows a change in state policy in response to a citizen-approved referendum calling for more local school aid. The state’s education aid formula now includes a higher-than-normal reimbursement for special-education students meant to live up to the promise of paying for that instruction.

While no one in the Department of Education is putting it in these terms, it’s not unreasonable – now that the state is paying for it – that the state set the standards for special education.

Still, parents and advocates for students with disabilities are right to be concerned. The stakes are very high.

For many students, special-education services can be the difference between academic success leading to a lifetime of productivity and educational failure.

With greater emphasis in education policy circles on the achievements of all students, special education grows in importance. If, for example, high schools are going to eliminate “tracking” and place students in classes without regard to ability, then it’s important that all students are able to keep up.

No doubt, with some districts classifying nearly one-third of their students as having a learning disability, there are some kids who are getting these services who should be getting mainstream help such as after-school tutoring.

But identifying those students is not worth the heavy price to be paid if it means kids who really need special ed don’t get help. That makes the details of what the education department proposes critical. It is why Augusta lawmakers, who must approve of the standards, should pay close attention.

Advocates have complained that the standards now contemplated focus too much on pen-to-paper academic achievement and don’t put enough emphasis on communication and social skills, which also are important to school success.

This has been a particular concern of parents of students with Asperger’s syndrome, a condition on the autism spectrum that can leave students doing well academically but struggling socially and in their interactions with teachers.

State officials say the new standards don’t focus exclusively on academic progress, and students with disabilities affecting other components of a well-rounded education will continue to qualify for services.

Until the new standards are implemented, though, it will be difficult for anyone to say for sure whether they will result in over-identification or under-identification of special-needs students.

In fact, what drives special-education designations often has less to do with regulations and more to do with a district’s resources, its commitment to special education and how hard a parent is willing or able to fight for help.

Every case is different, so any system for identifying special- education students is going to depend to some degree on the subjective decisions of the people on the Pupil Evaluation Team.

Inevitably, given the degree to which local districts set their own policies in Maine, that’s going to lead to different outcomes place-to-place, even with uniform state standards.

Also driving the identification process is the state reimbursement formula. School districts get a generous reimbursement for special-education services for up to 15 percent of the student population. After that, the reimbursement drops considerably.

While one hopes education professionals don’t let money dictate their decisions, there’s no denying that the financial incentives encourage districts to identify no fewer, but no more than 15 percent of their students as having a learning disability.

That the system is so vulnerable to influences outside of the regulations themselves argues for a robust appeals process. It would be helpful to parents and school districts if this could be done without the expense of going to court.

Also, the proposed regulations should set clear goals for the policy and require adjustments if those goals are not being met. It may be useful, for instance, for lawmakers to require periodic auditing around the state. This would be especially helpful when a district has an unusually low number of students identified or a much higher-than-average number qualifying.

What most needs to happen with these new regulations is that care be taken as they work their way through the Legislature. Maine will pay a heavy price if it wastes resources on students who don’t need special services. It will pay a heavier price if it fails to help the kids who do.

(c) 2007 Portland Press Herald. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.