What Cost-Benefit Analysis is
Teaching Us About Special Education
The Wildwood Institute was founded in 1996 with the mission of "promoting practices and policies that enable people with disabilities to lead productive and independent lives." The very first step we took with regard to this mission was to create a tool to evaluate the impact special education programs are having on adult independence and productivity. With the assistance of a national panel of distinguished advisors, the conceptual work for the Framework for the Evaluation of Cost and Benefit in Special Education was completed in the spring of 1997. During 1997 the Institute not only finished field-testing the Framework, but also began using it with school districts around the country to support improvements in special education practice and policy.
In essence the Framework seeks to correlate investments made in a student's educational tenure to long-term life results in the areas of independence and productivity. Calculating the investment in a special education is relatively straightforward. Using an individual student's program as the starting point of every Framework-based evaluation, the evaluator uses a set of predefined worksheets to easily ascertain the total cost of a special education program. This total amount is then reduced by the district's average per pupil cost of providing a regular education. The resulting premium amount is defined as the investment made in a special program.
Benefits are calculated by projecting incremental improvements made in an individual's life prospects. Two indicators of results are used to calculate the benefits of a program: vocational productivity and residential independence. The former is measured in terms of two components: the level of achievement in employment; and, the level of post-graduation support needed to attain and retain that level of employment. In other words, by virtue of having received a special education program as opposed to just a regular education program a student might hold a semi-skilled job instead of an unskilled position. Similarly, without a special program, the student may have needed a transitional employment program after graduation, but by virtue of having a transitional program during his or her educational tenure, the student graduates ready for semi-skilled employment. The improvement in results reduces the long-term requirement of public support, an improvement which is quantified and which represents a financial benefit to the community.
The benefit related to residential independence is also calculated. Some proportion of the special education population will be unable to reside independently in adulthood. Given the significant cost of providing residential support to adults, any improvement that can be realized for an individual in terms of living more independently has a meaningful financial benefit to the community at large. Again, the incremental improvement deriving from a special program is quantified and represents a financial benefit to the community.
The illustration below is helpful in understanding the basic mechanics of the model. On the left side is cost, or more specifically, premium cost. On the right are the components of total benefit, where the half-arrows represent net gains in productivity and independence - the areas from which benefits derive. Arrow A reflects the increased vocational attainment made possible by a special education program; Arrow B shows the decrease in support needed to maintain that employment; and Arrow C shows the decrease in support needed for independent living. Arrows A, B, and C together represent the total benefit of a special education program which, again, is really the increase in an individual's propensity for independent living and productive employment.
Increased use of the Framework is teaching us a number of important lessons that will have significant implications for both practice and policy. While our results are somewhat preliminary because of the relative newness of our work, the lessons described in this document are supported by the fact that each is a recurrent theme in our evaluations. In the coming year, we will continue building our repository of knowledge and, as that repository grows, we will be developing statements regarding reform actions that policy should be supporting.
Lesson One: Begin with the end in mind.
Students with disabilities have aspirations not unlike those of their peers. They overwhelmingly seek to be adults who hold jobs, who live independently, who enjoy strong relationships with friends and families, and who contribute to the general welfare of their communities. The special student is different from his peers in that the ultimate form his or her adult life takes may be influenced and impacted by a disability. That is, a disability may become a handicap as it precludes an adult from achieving that which would normally be achievable. While special education may attempt to correct a "disability" whenever possible - for example, in the case of a speech impairment caused by a physical difficulty - the far more prevalent work in the field is centered around assisting students with disabilities in the development of compensating mechanisms and strategies. The true goal of special education is, appropriately, to minimize the impact a disability can have on achievement in life.
Those who have read Stephen Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People will recognize "begin with the end in mind" as the second of those seven habits. Not only is this practice effective for individuals, but it is a characteristic of effective organizations, too. In the absence of a general idea about one's ultimate goal, planning will lack focus, implementation will not be squarely directed at efforts likely to produce results, and the evaluation of progress will be impossible as progress can only be measured relative to a specific goal. To a certain degree, special education has lost its long-term focus on life results, a situation that has resulted in programs being less relevant and beneficial than is possible.
Beginning with the end in mind is important for designing relevant education for all students, but it is especially critical for those students with special needs. Our world is in the midst of a historic transition. Driven by advances in technology, our economy is becoming significantly more globally interdependent. Similarly, the economy is increasingly dependent on having access to a work force that not only has deep knowledge and advanced skills, but also the abilities to solve problems and engage in continuous retraining. With this increased dependence on knowledge there is a corresponding decrease in the demand for low or unskilled labor. People with cognitive disabilities, who comprise the largest proportion of people served through special education, have historically competed for jobs in this shrinking portion of the employment spectrum.
The public's willingness to continue to support the "social safety net," at least as it exists today, is diminishing as well. There are numerous initiatives underway to reduce the dependence of individuals on public support systems as well as the investment the public is asked to make in such programs. The problem policy-makers will likely face is that employment opportunities are likely to diminish for people with minimal skills more quickly than effective retraining programs can be created. Thus, policy-makers are attempting to either maintain or reduce the current supply of social programs at the exact same time that demand for such programs is very likely to increase.
Special education, therefore, has an absolutely critical role to play in preparing students with disabilities for a world that is likely to be far more hostile than the one we know today. The best programs we have been involved with have had as a central tenet the notion of working backwards. That is, they identify the skills, behaviors, and other attributes a person will need for success in adulthood and then create truly individualized programs that build incrementally toward those requirements. In building a truly individualized program based on desired real world results, energy and effort can be focused on initiatives and activities that are likely to produce applicable and relevant results.
Lesson Two: Fit programs to students, not students to programs.
The special education student has something of an advantage over his regular education counterpart. That is, Public Law 94-142 asserts in law the right of a student with a disability to a "free and appropriate public education." The operative work in the aforementioned phrase is "appropriate" as the regular education student is entitled only to a "free" public education. "Appropriate" is a legal entitlement conferred only upon students with disabilities.
In an ideal world each student would have an individualized education program where instruction was delivered in a manner consistent with one's preferred style of learning and where said instruction was designed to maximize the student's potential for adult success. Indeed, much of the current call for school reform probably finds its roots in the fact that information and knowledge are now being developed at such a rapid rate that the schools' teaching of content - the foundation underlying much of secondary and post-secondary education - is no longer appropriate. Perhaps today's world requires an emphasis on teaching information access and filtering skills in the context of knowledge creation and problem solving. Such a rethinking of this aspect of education might make it truly possible to reshape the role of the teacher from disseminator of knowledge to learning coach, to reframe learning around the powerful potentials of new technology, and to "mass customize" education around the needs of students.
Special education, by virtue of P.L. 94-142's affirmation of the disabled student's right to an appropriate education, enjoys today what is only a long-term ideal for regular education. What keeps regular education from pursuing this ideal is the issue of efficiency - the "factory" model predominantly used in education today is "efficient" from a perspective of "resources" needed. Without serious challenges to some of our core assumptions about formal education - the importance of considering the long-term "real world" impact of education, for example - it will be impossible to make a more individualized system efficient enough to be affordable. The same question of efficiency is having an adverse impact on many special education programs as they strive to be less expensive in the wake of continuing criticism and scrutiny over the issue of cost.
In cost-benefit analysis, however, efficiency cannot be measured only on the cost side of the equation. Rather, efficiency demands to be measured in the context of striking a balance between short-term costs and long-term benefits. For example, while on the surface it may seem cost-efficient to place twelve students with either severe or highly complex disabilities together in a single self-contained classroom, if the mixture of students is not appropriate, then the learning and development of skills will fall short of desired goals. Expanding our example, if a non-verbal autistic student's communications device cannot be used because it is disruptive to an emotionally disturbed student in the same class, then the communications aspect of the autistic student's program will suffer and there is far more likely to be a long-term loss. in terms of individual potential.
All too often we see programs that are developed to address the need of system efficiency. Students are categorized and placed into what is viewed the "appropriate" program for that "type" of student, yet the program fails to generate the desired and/or anticipated results. The impact is more profound for those with complex disabilities, such as autism, than it is for students with less complex disabilities, such as mental retardation. The best programs we have found, especially for those students with complex disabilities, truly start with the individual student and build individualized programs back from the basis of long-term needs. Such programs are obviously more difficult to create, especially as they still have a mandate of being affordable, yet there are organizations who manage to succeed in these efforts. The value of these programs shows up in the long-term benefits as these programs more often than not seem to deliver on their promise of results.
Lesson Three: Build bridges and destroy walls.
Building programs around the needs of individual students within the context of what those students will need to be successful adults is admittedly a difficult and complex task. Yet, the challenges of a more demanding job market and the decreasing desire of the public to support huge social programs demands that special education achieve better long-term results. One of the key impediments to the achievement of these results is the fact that education today exists as a highly insular institution in American society. Many have observed that most trades and occupations have changed dramatically not only in their practices and processes, but in their tools as well. Yet, education has remained essentially the same for the entire part of the past hundred years. To remain vibrant and relevant, education must build bridges to the larger community while destroying the walls - rules, regulations, and culture - that keep it too separate from the rest of the world.
The reason education must become less insular is that it currently lacks a feedback loop that should be connected to the real world in such a way that schools learn what they have done well and what they need to improve upon. How many schools know where their graduates are five or ten years after graduation? How many have examined what practices most impacted their students, either positively or negatively, with regard to their ability to be successful adults? These questions are almost never asked, thus they are never answered and there are consequently no real valid answers on which to refine educational practice and program. Furthermore, by limiting interactions with the real world, education is often slow to identify how it might contribute productively to the rapid changes taking place in employment.
While it does have some issues in this regard, elementary education benefits from having a clear mission of focusing on basic and universal skills. Secondary education, however, very much needs to learn this lesson. On a positive note, there appears to be some exemplary learning being made by the nation's best school to work programs.
For a significant portion of this century, secondary education has focused on preparation for college. While admirable, there are problems with this approach, most important of which is the fact that the majority of students do not achieve degree status at either two or four year schools. Thus, the immense degree to which most students are reliant on their secondary education experiences is not reflected in either the design or life relevance of secondary programs.
As school to work transition programs are moving from their roots in the realm of special education to application for students without disabilities, they are teaching us the importance of working with the community. The best programs have learned that they need to work with a variety of external partners. For example, they teach job skills not only in local high schools, but in community colleges when that arrangement is more appropriate. Furthermore, these skills are tried and tested in actual work experience, which has the additional benefit of assisting in the development of appropriate work behaviors. The best school to work programs do not simulate work in a school environment, but actually use the community as a classroom.
We have also seen programs focused on students with low skill levels in the area of independent living. These "school to life" programs also often use the community as a classroom by teaching banking in banks, shopping in malls, and cooking and cleaning in actual apartments. Besides teaching "life" skills, these programs also aid in the development of interpersonal skills, not only for students, but also for the community which is given a unique opportunity to learn about working with people who have disabilities.
The community has a wealth of learning to offer schools. Likewise, schools have a huge base of knowledge to offer the community. The best special education programs we have seen are constantly nurturing their relationship to the community in the interest of producing appropriate results for their students. Again, please note the focus on results! More schools could benefit from building new networks to the world beyond the school walls for the purpose of generating better student results.
Lesson Four: Organizational culture and structure count.
One of the surprising lessons we have learned is that the issues of organizational structure and culture have an enormous impact not only on the types of programs a school offers, but the quality of those offerings as well. Schools are under enormous pressure to satisfy a variety of difficult and often conflicting demands. In reality, though, the world's very best organizations really do only two or three things exceptionally well; thus, the "stick to the knitting" approach that has pervaded corporate enterprise for the past fifteen years. Yet our schools are asked to excel in multiple areas that extend beyond regular academic instruction into special education, in its many different forms, and even into functions that have traditionally been assigned to the nation's social sector (families, community groups, churches, and human service agencies). Add to this the constant stream of initiatives, reform and otherwise, emanating from the federal and state departments of education and the increasingly difficult directives from local boards of education and you have what appears to be a virtually impossible task.
Organizational behavior is driven both by a formal set of rules, regulations, and policy and an informal set of beliefs, values, and preferences. Most organizations, especially older, larger, and mature ones, attempt to drive "production" through compliance with formal mechanisms. The problem with this approach is that personal behavior, which collectively results in organizational behavior, is not driven by compliance but by the alignment of goals between an organization and an individual. Thus, you can mandate until you are blue in the face, so to speak, but in the absence of the ability to inflict physical harm, mandating will not, to any significant degree, influence organizational behavior. Shared vision counts, as does modeling of desired behaviors. Policy and procedure manuals are largely meaningless from a strategic perspective.
Indeed, successful schools seem to have incorporated into their organizational DNA the notions of risk-taking and of an occasional "breaking of the rules." They have incorporated fully the notion of "trust" as well as the knowledge that making mistakes is not only acceptable, but desirable provided they enhance learning and organizational competence. Progress is truly made by testing limits, by making mistakes, and by learning from our forays into the unknown; yet too many schools are caught in the trap of doing things "by the book." A culture that is properly nurtured shows clearly and immediately. If innovation is valued and modeled, it happens automatically. Schools that embrace new ideas incorporate technology naturally, build relationships with the community easily, and develop better instructional practice in small but continual steps.
To some degree, special education's legal ability to "break the rules" has enabled a more dynamic environment. However, with the current foci on cost and the integration of regular and special education, that ability to experiment is being significantly challenged.
Complicating the matter even further is the fact that special education typically exists as an organization within an organization. With many districts attempting to deliver a greater variety of special services within the context of regular education, the inherently difficult task of "combining" special education and regular education often creates an uncomfortable situation for students and professionals alike. Schools have generally underestimated the organizational implications of these types of initiatives.
The lesson learned here is that while greater than eighty-five percent of students do not require a special education, the remaining twelve to fifteen percent that do constitute a sizable group. If schools are serious about educating students with disabilities, which continues to be very sound public policy, then they have to articulate the importance of the task and model their commitment to producing strong results from their efforts. Likewise, for schools in which the lines between regular and special education are blurring, there is a real and critical need to build organizational structures and supports that enable regular and special education staff to work effectively together in what is truly a shared responsibility.
Lesson Five: Special education is "special" for a reason.
Common sense tells us that a single approach to education will not be optimal, or even realistic, for every single school age student. Special education as a practice separate from regular education exists because of the fact that there were students who simply could not succeed in either a traditional curriculum or traditional classroom. Our work in evaluating cost and benefit in special education affirms that this situation remains to this day; that is, a different approach remain important for some proportion of the student population.
The above statement could, and in fact, should be considered a rebuke of the notion of "full inclusion." We have found the concept of "full inclusion," as defined to mean that every student is best educated within the context of a regular education classroom, to be flawed. There are simply some students who at varying stages of their educational tenure are not appropriately placed in a regular education setting. Such a placement not only fails to benefit the student with a severe or extremely complex disability, but can adversely affect the learning of other students as well.
This is not to say that the regular education classroom cannot be a very good environment in which to deliver special education services - it can. In fact, our work had lead us to conclude, as we will discuss more fully at the end of this paper, that special education instructional practices not only enhance achievement for all students, but can also reduce referrals to special education. In terms of public policy, if one really wants to get special education costs under control, the best effort that can be made is to improve regular education. First, regular education content could be far more relevant than it is today. Second, practice within regular education could be improved by broadening instructional strategies to better address the diverse learning styles and preferences of students.
Special education needs to preserved for those students who really need something different. When we fail to create individualized programs that address the "real world" needs of individual students - independence and productivity in adulthood - we set students up for life failure, which very often implies the requirement of costly adult human services. While education cannot be expected to avert every "bad outcome," it can play a critical role in minimizing the long-term costs associated with the people who cannot live and work with complete independence.
Lesson Six: The practitioner's role is pivotal.
We have observed situations where even within a single grade level, within a single school, with the same curriculum, with the same level of enhanced classroom supports, and with essentially the same mixture of students, one practitioner will achieve substantially better student results than his or her peers. For example, in one school where we reviewed elementary programs, there was a grade level where one practitioner consistently had seventy to eighty percent of her special students score out of remedial math and reading while her counterparts experienced a more typical rate of twenty-five to forty percent. As this happened consistently over a period of many years, we were asked to develop observations on why this situation was occurring.
Subsequent to our review, we concluded that several factors contributed to this somewhat unique situation. The first is that the teacher experiencing the exceptional results had far more special education training than her counterparts. She was, therefore, much more likely to deliver instruction in multiple formats so as to ensure that the needs of students with diverse learning styles received instruction in a manner consistent with their preferred style. Furthermore, this teacher was far more likely to individualize instruction and activities than her counterparts, even for the students who had not been identified as having special needs. Finally, when an additional teacher was in the classroom to assist students with math or reading difficulties, their involvement was seamlessly integrated into the instruction being delivered. In other words, by tightly integrating the work of a second teacher into the regular instruction program, that program was strengthened through the ability to use smaller groups and even further diversify and target the teaching methods being employed.
The point of this story is not that this teacher's colleagues were poor teachers, they were very competent and good teachers. However, they did not have the same level of additional training in special education practices that would have expanded their instructional repertoire. The point is that serious investments in practitioner development are worth the expended effort, the time, and the money. In much the same way that physicians must keep current with improvements in medical practice, so too much teachers keep current with new practice. The reluctance of many districts to meaningfully invest in maintaining a high level of current skills in its work force is a national disgrace that leads to sub-optimal student achievement. Program models are important, but what a teacher does in the classroom is really "where the rubber meets the road." We have learned very clearly not to underestimate the impact that a well-trained practitioner can have on student achievement.
Though we have over the past couple of decades started to make some important progress, the understanding of how people learn remains essentially a great mystery. This lack of knowledge is true for the entire population, though the mystery is even more profound for students with cognitive disabilities. For those having what we consider "complex" disabilities - learning disabilities, neurological impairments, autism - identifying successful instructional strategies can be time consuming, arduous, and often frustrating work.
One of the general techniques that we have seen work very well for this population - which we suspect is highly applicable to the general population as well - is the use of truly multidisciplinary programming. Please note that what we are referring to here is not an occasional project in which teachers from two disciplines collaborate, but rather a comprehensive and systematic approach to skills development. For example, in one school with which we have worked, if a student were seriously deficient in math skills, then the building of those skills would take place not only in the regular classroom, but in specials as well. A music class would be used to teach the concepts of counting. Bowling might be a regular physical education activity, though the counting of pins and score-keeping were just as important as the physical activity. Likewise, other unique activities would be utilized, such as establishing a weekly bake sale where money needed to be continually counted.
There are obviously numerous obstacles to taking this type of approach. First, the school needed to establish considerable amounts of group planning and evaluation opportunities. Similarly, the school had to rethink the concept of student groupings so as to develop fluency in groupings, thus allowing students with similar needs to participate in like activities. Finally, there is the obvious issue of resources. Building in opportunities for staff coordination and flexibility in scheduling implied a higher level of required resources and greater effort on coordination for administrators.
When subjected to a cost-benefit evaluation this program fared very well. Obviously, the cost was higher, but the projected benefits were substantially higher, too. The core lesson that this example taught us is that how money is spent is at least as important as how much is expended. Building on the example above, the school could have spent its resources traditionally by using remedial math services. However, using a non-traditional approach yielded learning at a higher level of depth, at a faster rate of acquisition, and with a greater degree of generalization. While difficult, sometimes the best approach is to "break the rules" and think "beyond the box." While our observations in this regard are highly specific to special programs we have observed, we strongly believe there are implications for use of multidisciplinary programs in regular education, especially at the secondary level.
Lesson Eight: Standards need to be relative, not absolute.
The primary driver of public policy today is business, a situation that is neither unexpected nor inherently undesirable. One could break the economy up into three distinct sectors: private enterprise, government, and the social sector, a term coined by Peter Drucker. One could legitimately argue that government has not met the expectations we as a society once set for it. If it had, we would not be "reforming" so many aspects of it today: Welfare, Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security are but a few obvious examples.
The social sector is something of a mixed bag. On one hand, there are scores of community organizations have had remarkable success in addressing social issues the government has not been unable to remedy. On the other hand, education would be considered a major component of the social sector, and we have spent the last fifteen years or so attempting to reform it.
Business, on the other hand, has much to be proud of. By the late 1970s American industry had become largely uncompetitive with foreign competition and our economy suffered from not only rampant inflation, but "stagflation" as well. Business did "read the writing on the wall," so to speak, and set out to reform itself. And reform itself it did. Today American enterprise and expertise is not only respected globally, but our economy is the envy of the entire world. Flush with success and the resultant confidence, American business has found itself the primary driver of public policy today.
Business' gift to education is today's insistence on standards, a gift that policy-makers nationwide are gladly accepting. The concept of standards is a very good one and, indeed, one that does have application to education. The form in which standards is being applied, however, is raising some important issues for special education.
One must note that standards, which business successfully applied to the issue of product quality over the past fifteen years, are going to be inherently different in an educational setting. For example, take the concept of employee performance standards. In business and industry, those employees who do not measure up to a company's standards can, and often do, have their employment relationship terminated. Public schools do not, and should not, have this option with regard to students. The price paid by both individuals and the public at large for the failure to complete school is well-documented. Yet, it appears to understood, at both state policy-making levels and at the district level, that drop-out rates will go up as a result of standards. Frighteningly, it appears that many in leadership positions tacitly find the trade-off between standards achievement and drop-out rates to be acceptable.
The Institute also believes that the standards movement is likely to result in increased referrals to special education, a situation that will contribute to the cost issues that have already arisen over the past several years. Our worry, which is admittedly cynical, is that increases in the drop-out rate and the number of students referred to special education - whose test scores are not typically included in school averages - will have the effect of increasing average test scores without there having been any real improvement in educational practice. Despite clearly demonstrable less desirable long-term results, incomplete statistical evidence will likely be presented as proof that standards work.
We strongly believe that education, special and regular alike, can be improved and that all students should be held to a higher standard. Our recommendation, however, is that public policy reflect standards of improvement for all students based on "real world" results. That is, if our education system is in the aggregate producing graduates who are more productive and who require less public support in adulthood, then improvement is taking place within the system. Our fear is that the current standards push, which will certainly benefit our top students, will also further widen the existing gap between those who prosper in our society and those who become dependent on public systems. Given the challenges of our changing world and the immense competition for public resources, we cannot afford greater societal dependence on our social support systems.
Lesson Nine: Meaningfully involved families are key assets, not liabilities
The Wildwood Institute has, since its inception, clearly understood that families play a different role in the lives of people with disabilities than they do for their children who do not have a disability. Out of concern and need, families tend to be more involved in their child's educational program. Furthermore, people with disabilities tend to need more daily assistance, which has a profound impact on family life. And, in adulthood, many families continue to be sources of needed support long after siblings without disabilities have moved to complete independence. The family clearly has a very strong vested interest in the impact education can have on the life of a student with a disability.
For this reason, when performing a cost-benefit evaluation, in addition to working with educators, we like to work directly with family members to come to an understanding of how their vision of a student's future relates to the school's vision, of how they perceive learning to be progressing for their child, and to gain a sense of how they are involved in their child's program. We have found consistently that families that play an integral part in their child's program have a very positive impact on how cost-beneficial that program can be. Meaningfully involved parents bring a long-term perspective, which is sometimes otherwise lost in program planning. For many students, having a coordinated plan that is consistent between school and home not only enhances academic learning, but has positive behavioral ramifications as well. Finally, informed families are sometimes able to work with practitioners and other school professionals to access needed services that would not be accessible without a coordinated effort. The advocate role of the informed family can often be the differentiating factor that allows a student to benefit from an appropriate program.
This is not to say that every family has input that is immediately meaningful with regard to a student's program, nor is it to say that all schools, practitioners, and professionals welcome family involvement. What we are saying is that when families are educated as to the educational needs of their children, and as schools are willing to productively work with families, the student's educational experience can be greatly improved. There is truly a shared responsibility as well as a need for cooperation and some level of "give and take." Schools can never have the vested interest in a student's long-term achievement that families do. Likewise, families alone do not have the ability or the expertise to deliver an educational program that can really make a difference in the life of a student with a disability. By communicating clearly and thoroughly, true family-school partnerships that work very well can be established.
Lesson Ten: Improvements in regular education are highly cost-beneficial
The question asked most often of the Institute is, "How can we run less expensive special education programs?" Unfortunately, the simple answer to that question has difficult implications. The answer we give is, "Improve regular education."
Special education programs always cost more than their regular education counterparts. However, the need for a special program typically arises from a situation where a student is simply not successful in a regular program. As we have found increases in enrollment to be primarily responsible for the continual increases in the systematic costs associated with special education, the obvious solution to reducing those costs is to decrease referrals. To do this and not experience declining results, one must improve regular education so that it is more relevant for all students.
We have had the pleasure of working with a district in which it had, through an unusual chain of events, created a school in its district that was predominantly staffed with special education teachers employed in the role of regular classroom teachers. After a couple of years of experience with this model, the district realized that a couple of amazing patterns had emerged when comparing this unusually staffed school with the others in its district. Despite relatively similar student populations, the school primarily staffed with special education teachers was generating levels of achievement that exceeded the other schools by a statistically significant margin. More surprisingly, the special educators turned regular educators in this school referred fewer students, again by a statistically significant margin, to special education.
While not subjected to a scientifically rigorous evaluation - something we would like to do in the coming year - the preliminary information and results appear to be highly reliable. The implications echo observations noted elsewhere in this document. The practice that takes place at the classroom level is absolutely critical in that it is the primary factor responsible for student achievement. Furthermore, it is strongly implied that good special education practice is good regular education practice. Indeed, we are coming to the conclusion that for special and regular education alike, there is no more important factor contributing to student achievement than the application of sound teaching practices. Unfortunately, schools seem to sometimes seem to lose sight of this fact, a truth that is reflected in all the other "extra" priorities we assign to teachers.
Despite the fact that improving regular education appears to be a sound initiative for reducing special education enrollment and costs, it is equally important to note that special education needs to remain an alternative for some proportion of the student population. Rigor and relevance in program is important for every student, regular and special alike. There will inevitably be situations, though, where what can be offered in a regular education context cannot be altered and enhanced enough to represent an "appropriate" education for a minority of students for whom rigor and relevance means something different. As noted before, regular and special education have a symbiotic relationship. Each can learn from the other. By working together, the life results for all students can be enhanced, which is, of course, the primary mission of education of any type.
Building a successful education program is a remarkably complex endeavor, perhaps more so than any other human activity. In terms of importance of mission, education is clearly without peer. Yes, free enterprise is the engine on which our prosperity as a people is built. But this engine cannot run without an educated work force and a citizenry that believes in the pursuit of opportunity, compassion, and civility. Education is the foundation of any modern society, though as America approaches a new millennium, we often lose sight of this fact. If we are to meet the challenges of a new society, a new economy, and a new world order, then education needs to be a relevant, vibrant, and vital institution for all of our people. Enabling people with disabilities to be contributing and participating members of our new world is one of the critical issues policy-makers need to be focused on today. There will be a significant price, not only in terms of money and resources, to be paid should we fail to address the issue in a forthright and direct manner. The Wildwood Institute believes that by aligning practice and policy with the real and true needs of our emerging new world, we can successfully meet this formidable challenge.
Copyright 1998 Wildwood Programs, Inc.