The Three C's of Special Education: An Intuitive Model for Change Management
In 1996 the Wildwood Institute was created out of the belief that policy-making with regard to special education had become almost singularly driven by the issue of cost and that this situation would ultimately impact negatively on students, particularly in the long-term. Admittedly, special programs are expensive; however, we believed that cost was but one side of the total picture. In order to measure the true effectiveness of a special education program, one must also consider the benefits that derive from its implementation. Given the significant potential of people with disabilities to require public supports throughout their life, it was further recognized that some significant portion of program benefits could be quantified in terms of long-term public expenditures, which are of great interest to those making public policy.
We quickly determined that what was lacking in the public discourse over special education was reliable data with which informed and objective decisions could be made. Even the basic systemic costs of special education, despite significant research, could not be ascertained with a high degree of certainty, to say nothing of a having a systemic measurement of quantified benefits. In response to this information void, the Wildwood Institute, with the assistance of a national panel of distinguished advisors headed by Dr. Willard Daggett of the International Center for Leadership in Education and Mr. Lawrence Gloeckler of the New York State Education Department, began development of a tool which later became known as the Framework for Evaluating Cost and Benefit in Special Education.
The Framework employs a simple and intuitive model wherein the incremental investment made in a special education program is correlated to long-term public support savings realized through an individual's achieving enhanced levels of adult independence and productivity. The model is very person-centered in that it is always applied to individual student-program combinations and attempts to identify the critical factors to be addressed by a program so that positive life results are realized by the student. Furthermore, the model supports a "win-win" situation in that enhanced independence and productivity are desirable both by individuals with disabilities and also the public at large.
In using the Framework over the course of several years with numerous districts, both large and small, we found it to be an excellent model for discovery. That is, by going through the rigor of a Framework-based set of evaluations, a school district could easily identify weaknesses not only in specific special programs, but also weaknesses in the general management of its special program practices and processes.
As our experience came to encompass work with numerous programs and schools, we began to identify patterns with regard to both program strengths and deficiencies. Slowly these patterns coalesced into a model we came to term The Three C's of Special Education. The Three C's themselves are curriculum, character, and coordination. What we found is that with this simple conceptual framework we could easily and effectively communicate programmatic and systemic issues with not only educators, but with parents, school board members, and the general community as well. Thus far, our experience has indicated that the Three C's are sufficiently fundamental and encompassing for not only discussing program and system issues, but for providing a conceptual "roadmap" for implementing a program of change as well. The rest of this paper discusses each of the Three C's in greater detail.
Curriculum itself is a basic organizing tool which serves as a central focus point for educators. In essence, if one were to start by deciding what optimal combination of skill development and knowledge acquisition was important to support a student in becoming a successful adult, curriculum would ideally be derived by working backwards. In doing so, instruction and educational activities would be aligned with the notion of progressively developing the student to those desired ends. In fact, even though the curriculum we have today is imperfect in many regards, one could relatively easily support the assertion that curriculum development overall is reflective of this approach.
The complexity of education's task, combined with environmental factors, present formidable obstacles to achieving simple success. In other words, the effectiveness of curriculum is compromised by a number of obstacles, which include the following:
- the tradeoff between efficiency and effectiveness;
- the discontinuity, especially among students with special needs, between age and developmental readiness; and,
- the incongruity between the desired learning standards and the present state of assessment with regard to progress, achievement, and skill mastery.
The Efficiency and Effectiveness Tradeoff
Perhaps the greatest challenge faced by education is the inherent tradeoff that exists between efficiency and effectiveness. This is a particularly interesting issue in our current environment in which technology is enabling huge productivity gains in many industries. Indeed, advances in both the cost and performance of information technology appear to be enabling many businesses to become more efficient and effective at the same time. Real costs are declining while quality levels rise, a notion that even a couple decades ago was largely unthinkable. Indeed, an economic revolution is taking place that is on a scale not unlike that of the Industrial Revolution a century ago.
The challenge to education is twofold. On one hand, the aforementioned revolution is driving significant changes in the requirements of the workplace, which in turn is driving, and will continue to drive, demands that education make changes in what it teaches. A second challenge emerges from the current situation in which many are calling for education to achieve increases in both efficiency and effectiveness. There are clearly, at a minimum, pockets of effectiveness in education. Efficiency is more difficult to define, though one can surely find substantial anecdotal evidence that education could improve in this regard.
The nature of education makes it different than other human endeavors, especially when compared to competitive enterprise. Producing a knowledgeable and skilled person is inherently different than producing a physical product or even a service. In essence, the difference results from a lack of control over the "raw materials," to use an economic term. Achieving quality and efficiency in a production environment is typically accomplished in two steps. First, one controls the flow of raw materials such that they are of a requisite level of quality, which is further distinguished by individual deviations that are as small as possible. That is, uniformity is critical. Second, the processes used to convert raw materials into desirable goods is standardized and tightly managed to achieve balance between the minimization of errors and the minimization of cost.
The problem for education is that not only does it have absolutely no control over its "raw materials," which are students, but there is similarly no real uniformity among students. Though they are alike in many ways, fundamentally students are individuals. With the "raw materials" defying homogeneity, one should conclude that standardization of process, the second step noted above, would be ineffective. Yet, this is in a sense exactly what we have done with curriculum. In the interest of efficiency, which is driven at least in part by limited resources, we have for all practical purposes implemented standards in terms of both curriculum and instructional approach, especially at the secondary level. With homogeneous "raw materials," this is not only not a problem, it is a strength. With hugely heterogeneous "raw materials," standardization becomes a major issue, especially for students with disabilities.
In fact, special education was born out of this realization. If a standard "curriculum" with a virtually single approach to instruction were effective for all students, then there would be no need for special education to be an institution inside an institution. Furthermore, if one accepts the proposition that the proportion of students referred to special education now exceeds the proportion of students with objectively identifiable disabilities, then one could reasonably assert that regular education as a singular entity is not even relevant to the needs of all regular education students.
We would assert that this is indeed the case, which results in a policy implication. That is, at this juncture in our learning we are comfortable stating that the issue of cost in special education is primarily, though not solely, an enrollment-driven phenomenon. In other words, the rise in cost is related more to there being a larger population requesting services than it is to increases in the basic incremental cost of providing services. As such, the most effective approach to addressing the issue of cost in special education would be to reduce the referral rate, which in turn means that regular education must be improved such that it is more relevant to a broader range of students.
Changing regular education so that is more relevant to a greater number of students, though, is going to be difficult as it will require a higher level of effectiveness, which may not be possible without some loss of efficiency, at least in terms of cost. Even if such a loss can be avoided, achieving higher effectiveness will require changes in practice.
In our estimation, the recent move towards higher standards in education has produced activities on the part of schools that support the assertion that improvements in regular education effectiveness are necessary. Many districts are reinstating resource room type of assistance to a larger proportion of the student population, many are adding classroom space so as to reduce class sizes and provide more one on one instruction, and a small number of enlightened districts are again providing developmental reading, writing and math classes in their secondary schools. In this sense, standards are having a marvelous impact on education.
On the other hand, there is an axiom in education that "what is on the test is what is taught." The high level learning standards typically expressed appear to us to make a great deal of sense. Overall they seem to address the core skills that students will need to become successful, contributing adults. Furthermore, they are stated in such a way that there is flexibility in how they can be applied to different students, who necessarily have different developmental profiles, interests, and potentials. For the most part, these high level learning standards are appropriate and worthwhile.
There is, however, a legitimate debate taking place over whether the tests that have been developed to measure achievement in the standards, as broadly stated, are reflective of skill mastery. Put another way, one can be taught to "pass the test" but still not have mastery of the requisite skills as dictated by the high level statement of learning standards.
The incidence of functional illiteracy in our nation would suggest that the implied detachment between the goals of the standards and the standardized tests that ultimately drive instruction is a real phenomenon. Many, many students manage to earn high school diplomas without having even a basic mastery of either language or mathematics, which represent the most fundamental of academic skills. Consequently, if instruction is aligned with testing, but testing is not aligned with "real world" indicators of core skill mastery, then there is uncertainty around whether or not students are mastering the skills that they will absolutely need in adulthood regardless of what the testing may indicate. Again, in the interest in efficiency, schools will work hard to get students to pass the test, though this may be ineffective if the test does not actually measure acquisition of the desired skill. This appears to us to be a defining problem in education today.
As noted in the previous section, students become developmentally ready for certain types of learning at different chronological ages. Most students become "ready to learn to read" between the ages of four and seven. Some students, though, will not become readers until the age of ten, or even in some cases at the age of fourteen. Furthermore, while they may become ready to learn to read "on schedule," the rate of progress a student will make will vary from that of other students of the same age. This is especially true of students with disabilities.
The problem that arises from this situation is that education is structured in such a way that there is a tacit assumption that all students emerge from elementary education with the core language and mathematical skills they need for success in content-based curricula essentially intact (secondary curricula are hugely content-based). Our work on this project has made it clear to us that, at least for students with cognitive disabilities, this is patently not true. Furthermore, we strongly suspect that many regular education students do not have functional mastery of basic core skills when they emerge from elementary education. Yet, secondary education is overwhelmingly predicated on the belief that those core skills have been mastered.
We have come to a number of conclusions on the basis of our observations. First, the aforementioned statistics on functional adult language and mathematical literacy are disconcerting, to say the least. Additionally, while it is true that there is a simple shortage of technologically knowledgeable and capable workers that is creating problems for employers, the real educational issue for employers appears to be that too many new hires are arriving without basic reading, writing, and math skills! The dollar amounts spent by corporations on this type of basic training is staggering and strongly suggests that not only have too many students not mastered the basic core skills at the end of elementary school, but basic mastery is not even accomplished by the time one graduate's from high school.
Exacerbating the issue of developmental readiness in the realm of language is the fact that there is a huge difference between decoding and comprehension, yet both are necessary for an individual to be a successful reader. Likewise, there is another huge gap between comprehension and application. One of the factors we consistently review in our work is the level at which one can read. Usually the responses appear to be positive at first as it is reported that many special education students can read at a fourth, fifth or sixth grade level. Yet, upon further investigation, it becomes apparent that this is the level at which they decode. Our experience in this project was that very few of the students we developed case studies for had even remotely strong levels of comprehension; application was not a goal for most of the students, at least beyond a functional level.
Consider secondary curriculum in the areas of language arts, science and social studies. The ability to read words is meaningless for students in the absence of the ability to comprehend meaning. As the secondary content-based curriculum becomes more dependent on students being able to draw appropriate conclusions, make complex linkages between disciplines, and understand abstract concepts, the requirement that one be able to decode and comprehend and apply becomes even more critical.
Many special education students have poor reading comprehension skills that set them up for failure in a content-based secondary curriculum. This raises concerns over inclusion and the strongly stated goals of the most recent version of the IDEA in terms of promoting access to the regular curriculum. Indeed, our observations would support the conclusion that inclusion in secondary settings without mastery of basic skills is roughly equivalent to setting students up for failure.
We would similarly argue that too many special education students are subject to expectations that are far too low. That is, once they have been identified as not being able to do something, the expectation that they may someday be able to do it often disappears. This appears to be especially true for students with learning disabilities who may in fact have strong cognitive ability, though that ability cannot be revealed using traditional approaches within generally accepted timeframes. For such students, academic achievement does not reflect the potential level of cognition demonstrated in other realms.
Furthermore, curriculum in special education programs seems to run the gamut from nothing to overabundance. We have found situations where there is a complete absence of curriculum. Without such a framework for setting expectations and suggesting instruction, we question what can realistically be achieved. Similarly, we have seen curricula with pages numbering into the hundreds. Too much detail represents a poor situation as well as the formidable nature of the task presented tends to paralyze those responsible for implementation. In other words, a curriculum overwhelming in scope is generally disregarded. It should be noted that in some of the cases we observed, the district was aware of the deficiencies and was making appropriate modifications.
The problem of overwhelming curriculum is indicative of a broader problem we refer to as "curriculum bloat." In essence, what this means is that we have managed to "stuff" curricula with more material than we can reasonably expect classroom teachers to cover. Furthermore, what happens when there is an excess of curricula is that the time allotted to each "topic" is so small that the learning associated with it is often not meaningful. Indeed, Dr. Willard Daggett of the International Center for Leadership in Education has observed that if amount of curricula were an indicator of "rigor" in education, then the United States would have by far the most rigorous program in the world. One could posit that as a whole, our curriculum is "a mile wide and an inch deep."
This problem further exacerbates the issue of curriculum being developmentally appropriate. One of the schools that we worked with on this project believed very strongly that many of its secondary students, both from special and regular education, were truly in need of developmental language and mathematics instruction. The main problem the district was having in offering these courses was that the schedule did not really allow for this student assistance if the students were to earn the credits needed for graduation. Once again one sees the issue of how the system forces educators into a situation where the students need to be helped to earn the credits and pass the test as opposed to building real mastery of core skills. Put another way, "curriculum bloat" is in effect "crowding out" the development of the core skills called for by the learning standards.
What should we do with regard to curriculum?
Good curricula can be, in our best estimation, judged by their success in meeting the following three requirements:
- that they are aligned with the developmental status of individual students rather than with chronological age;
- that they are rigorous in that they represent an easily discernable "stretch" for students; and,
- that they are consistent with the overriding goals of education as such goals relate to the mastering of basic core skills and not with what is "on the test."
The second point is obvious and as such requires minimal discussion. All students need to be constantly challenged by their education, though the challenges each student faces must necessarily be attainable.
To be attainable, curricula must also be developmentally appropriate. This has certain implications for the manner in which schools design their programs. Granted, there are very sound reasons for students of widely disparate ages not to be grouped together. It would not in most circumstances be appropriate, for example, for adolescents and young children to be in the same class. A multiage grouping of students who would typically be in first through third grade might be very appropriate, however, though this is rarely considered. This seems to us to represent at least a partial solution to the issue of social promotion, which has garnered so much public attention of late.
The biggest implication of developmentally appropriate curriculum is at the secondary level, though, as this is where we have found there to be the greatest weaknesses. Admittedly, we did find secondary programs that were truly exemplary; however, where we found major problems they were almost always in secondary as opposed to elementary settings. In our opinion, this is because there is an inherent mismatch for a sizable portion of the student population between secondary curricula, which is primarily content-based, and the development of core skills. Content should be a means of building stronger core skills and driving higher level application of those skills; however, content has become an end in and of itself. This mismatch is especially observable for students with cognitive disabilities, though we would maintain that a sizable portion of the non-disabled population fails to achieve to their potential for the same reason.
What appears to happen in secondary education is something we refer to as the "weak chain effect." In other words, it is assumed that the overall learning standards are closely aligned with the "real world" skill needs of adults. In turn it is assumed that the testing requirements for graduation are likewise aligned with those broadly defined learning standards. Then, in the interest of efficiency, curriculum is developed with the intent of enabling students to achieve satisfactory scores on the requisite testing. Finally , classroom instruction is derived from curriculum. If the assumptions correctly reflect reality, then the system works well. If any of the assumptions do not reflect reality, however, the entire system collapses. We think that the second assumption is faulty and that the system of assessment we have in place does not measure mastery of the fundamental skills and knowledge needed for adulthood.
This is where the value of the Framework really becomes apparent. The Framework cares not how a desired end is reached, it cares only that the result is realized. Consequently, by reducing the issue to its most fundamental roots, it can look through the politics and systemic roadblocks to simply examine whether or not a program and/or practice is likely to positively impact long-term independence and productivity. In other words, the Framework becomes a link back from the program/classroom level to the needs of people as adults. It is a double-check that is otherwise lacking in education today. It is indeed very difficult to establish this relationship for many, but certainly not all, secondary programs.
In essence, the Framework helps the evaluator "discover" whether the third indicator of a quality curriculum is met. If education is truly to be about the mastery of core skills - reading, writing, and mathematics - then it needs to be very careful and diligent in how it designs its instructional activities and its methods of assessment. Furthermore, it needs to check to see if the chain links back around; that is, one must directly ask and answer the question, "Does what happens in a classroom today have relevance to the real world needs a student will have as an adult?" This question connects curriculum and classroom activities directly to the "overriding goals of education." Regrettably, this connection is too seldom examined and we rely instead on a "weak chain" of shaky assumptions.
When compulsory education was first introduced in this nation its primary purpose was not academic development, but rather socialization. In fact, the book, Attendance Mandatory, Learning Optional, which was written in the early part of this century, very specifically lays out the rationale for this approach, which was sound at the time.
The socialization of our young continues to be a critical role for education, though many indicators seem to support the assertion that we are failing badly in this regard. The recent escalation in the incidence of school violence is but a small component of a much larger issue. The larger issue is that schools, for a variety of reasons, have effectively abandoned their role in promoting the development of strong character in students. Note that we are not talking about values when we speak of character - values are better left to families in the vast majority of cases - but rather about universal personal traits that underlie both greater personal fulfillment and enhanced societal well-being. We are talking about traits such as honesty, responsibility, respect, integrity, and compassion.
Schools are not entirely to blame in this matter. Ours has clearly become not only a more litigious society, but also one in which there has been a diminishment of personal responsibility. Thus, in many cases where schools have taken appropriate action with regard to issues of character, they have been met by parental opposition and sometimes litigation. One can understand how we have arrived at a situation where only the most extreme violations of expected and appropriate behavior are directly addressed, even if the situation is fundamentally unacceptable.
The issue of character development for students with disabilities is twofold. On one hand, we have found that the barrier that keeps most people with disabilities from attaining long-term, gainful employment in adulthood is related to behavioral deficiencies. People with disabilities are far less likely to be dismissed from a job because of shortcomings in their ability to perform job-related tasks - though this is sometimes a factor - than they are for not possessing an appreciation of appropriate workplace expectations with regard to behavior. Examples of such expectations include reliability, showing up on time, relating appropriately to authority, and maintaining a consistently strong effort. Disabilities can certainly have an influence over behavior; nonetheless, we have found that a diligent and appropriate approach to addressing such issues can be very successful over the long-term in many cases.
Students with disabilities also tend to face a social environment in school that does not foster their own feelings of self-worth and self-respect. In fact, for many students with disabilities, the environment is downright hostile. Interestingly, it is the students themselves who choose to talk about this phenomenon. We invariably ask students what they like and do not like about their schools, questions which are all too often answered with stories of mean things that are said and done to them by other students. Much more infrequently, but still mentioned, we hear that a school's adult staff members engage in similarly inappropriate behavior.
For example, in the course of our work on this project we heard a story, from a teacher, of how a mentally retarded student had been given the opportunity to be the water boy for the school's varsity football team. While this certainly could have had a positive impact on the student, it was relayed to us that on one night after the game the student was asked to sit in the middle of a parking lot while the football players drove their cars around him. While there is much to be distressed about with this story, the most distressing factor is that the team's head coach was present for the entire incident, yet did nothing to put a stop to it. In fact, the players surely interpreted his reticence and inaction as tacit approval and support.
Admittedly, this is an extreme example; however, it was not uncommon for us to hear that students with disabilities were removed from this or that class because the teacher did not treat a student with even a basic respect. Furthermore, the information obtained in our interviews with students suggest that all too often administrators are lax in dealing with issues that the students themselves will bring forward. Even in the limited number of interviews we did with students on this project, a small but significant number of them offered the observation that they were picked on by the other students, sought help from administrators, and yet "nothing was ever done."
A Model for Addressing Character Issues
In response to these findings, we have developed a simple model describing the components of a strong character program. While our motivation in developing the model was to apply our findings to special education, the model is, in our opinion, valid for all students. It is perhaps been explained through the use of the following graphic.
As alluded to earlier, the goal of education with regard to character is to instill in students an appreciation for principles such as honesty, responsibility, and initiative so that they can lead more fulfilling lives as well as to promote the general well-being of our society. In other words, the ultimate goal is to ensure that all students become adults who have social opportunity in the community which, of course, also includes work environments.
Our model is founded on the belief that strong character is most likely to emerge when it is addressed simultaneously in two realms. The more primary of the two realms is that of the student as an individual, which we call the Personal realm. Successful development in this realm is realized when students learn that behavior is a choice that has associated logical consequences. For example, the student who deals with conflicts by yelling and screaming must learn that his or her response is not only chosen, but is likely to impact his or her ability to have friends or hold down a job. Since behavior is a choice, it is possible to change it, though the effort required may be substantial. Nonetheless, poor behavioral choices are very often an underlying reason that people with disabilities may lose independence and productivity in adulthood, thus it requires the conscious attention of educators.
The most powerful influence on individual behavior may be the behavior we witness of others. We learn a huge part of our behavioral repertoire through the modeling of others. In fact, one cannot teach character through a lecture format. One can point out all the logical, intellectual reasons for choosing appropriate behavior, but nothing will speak louder than actions. As such, schools must ensure that the environments within a building operate in such a way that strong character is evident throughout, and where behavior that violates the principles of strong character are logically and consistently addressed. The School realm is, at a minimum, almost as important as the Personal realm - the importance may be in fact equal. For students with disabilities, we refer to this as an environment of "social safety," though the benefits transcend the simple notion of safety.
Students are, of course, learning appropriate behaviors throughout the entire time they are growing into adults. They will inevitably make mistakes and poor choices from time to time. Thus, every student will at some point during his or her educational tenure be subject to some level of meanness or nastiness. We do not mistakenly believe that any environment can be perfectly safe - life just is not that way. Nonetheless, students with disabilities do indeed have the right not to be the butt of continuous jokes or the recipients of cruel actions. While some students with disabilities do find social success in school, most do not. Such students are among the marginalized members of the student population, a situation that contributes to education achieving substandard results. The stakes are simply too high for schools not to actively address this issue, yet the majority of the schools we have encountered are doing a less than adequate job in this regard.
The first two C's, curriculum and character, are fairly obvious. School curriculum is being constantly debated at the local, state, and even federal levels. Character has gained significant prominence in the minds of educators in light of the horrific violence that has taken place in schools over the past year and a half. The third C, Coordination, though, is not something one hears discussed very often. Yet, in many ways, it is the most important of the three, especially as its primary role is to provide the "glue" between everything else. Indeed, we had to see in action the results of strong coordination in three separate schools before we realized its true importance and the influence it had over the quality of a student program.
Incidentally, it was small, rural schools that taught us about the importance of coordination, though without fail not one of them pointed out what they were doing nor did they understand it to be particularly unique. Rather, it was just the way that things were done.
Coordination is a term we use to make the concept easier to remember (since it can be grouped with the two other C's); the better term, which we tend to use more, is Active Program Management. In essence, Active Program Management is an approach to the monitoring of a student's educational tenure in such a way that progress is continually double-checked and program coherency is maintained from school year to school year. In other words, the concept means that someone other than the classroom teacher is actively involved with the student in the sense that they collaboratively work with the classroom teacher to develop instructional strategies, to monitor progress, and to ensure that the learning of one school year is viewed as a foundation on which future learning will take place.
In a sense, the role of the Active Program Manager is not unlike the old traditional role of the school principal. Years ago the school principal typically knew all of the students by name, knew basically how well they were performing in their school work, understood what was taking place not only in the curriculum but in individual classrooms, and ensured that overall education goals were being attained. As the demands on the school principal increased dramatically, this traditional role diminished, which is a shame as our opinion is that education could benefit from someone assuming such responsibilities.
In a couple of the schools in which we worked, we saw where the director of special education, or another senior administrator, was performing this role for students with disabilities. That is, they could describe off the top their heads what the student's major issues were, what type of program they were receiving, what type of success they were having in the program, and, occasionally, what the long-term (three to four years) plan was for their educational program. Wow!
This type of approach sounds immediately attractive, yet it becomes even more so when the fact that it appears to work exceptionally well is brought into consideration. The results were impressive. Students were much more likely to be grouped appropriately, the programs appeared to be better focused, teachers and managers worked more collaboratively, thereby increasing the knowledge of all involved parties. And, most importantly, students seemed to experience a higher level of achievement.
The key to making such an arrangement work appears to be size. In large districts where there are hundreds or even over a thousand students with special needs, personal attention to an individual program more often than not appears to managed by a "system," a collection of people and processes that move in and out of being involved in a program. When there were only one to two hundred students, we were much more likely to find managers in charge with not only an in-depth knowledge of the student, but also a real relationship. It is quite refreshing to walk the halls of a school with a director of special education and see that the director knows the students by name and that they all know him or her as well. In most cases, these exceptional directors knew the families well, too, which further strengthened the programs.
As we have noted in other parts of this document, any complex human activity requires management. Complexity is very rarely self-organizing in human systems. Education is clearly one of the most complex of all human activities - especially in light of the fact that we really know very little about how people learn - and all too often we leave it up to chance that a student will learn, grow, and develop. For a sizable number of students, this is acceptable, even if it is not optimal. For students with disabilities especially, and for many other students as well, you cannot leave their personal development, intellectual and socially, to chance. They will not develop without there being a responsible adult who is monitoring and managing that development over a long period of time. Though it sounds to us like common sense, it was not until we had seen its results several times that we realized what was driving those results and how truly important it was. Individual education programs require close and careful management.
Since formally organizing the Three C's into a distinct and named conceptual model, we have discussed it with educators both directly and at national and international conferences. Whereas the concept of cost-benefit analysis was for many educators immediately threatening and cold, despite having what we believe to be a very human and individualistic approach, the premise of the Three C's seems to be instantly understood and accepted. Consequently, we have come to talk about the Framework for the Evaluation of Cost and Benefit in Special Education and The Three C's of Special Education together. In fact, each now seems incomplete without the other.
It would be erroneous for schools to simply try to immediately organize program and systemic issues into the Three C's model without first going through the process of discovery provided the Framework model. Similarly, performing an evaluation without having a sense of what to do with the results is equally lacking. Having the two models fully developed and articulated has assisted our team of consultants and advisors greatly. More important, the combination provides a more complete basis for schools to develop approaches to program improvement, which ultimately results in better results for students. And that, we think, is what it is all about.
Copyright 2000 Wildwood Programs, Inc.