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By Millie Smith, Consultant for Students with Visual & Multiple Impairments, Dallas, TX
Abstract: This article discusses the implications of current federal legislation on the development of individualized education programs for students with severe disabilities. By law, academic instruction will be a part of the educational programs of all students with severe disabilities. The mandate that IEP teams determine priority educational needs for each individual student is still in place.
Key Words: state-wide assessment, IDEA, legislative mandate, federal acts, standards-based IEP, research-based instructional strategies, severe disabilities, embedding, accountability
Individualized education programs for many students with severe disabilities are going to change, if they haven’t changed already. What are these changes? How are they going to impact students? How are IEP teams going to maintain the focus of instruction on the priority educational needs of individuals? What decisions made by local school districts are mandated and which ones are open to informed choice making?
Special education providers across the nation have been very busy in the last few years. They have been designing and implementing procedures to administer statewide academic achievement assessments to special education students with severe disabilities. Students who previously met the federal requirement for statewide assessment by participating in what many school districts called “locally determined alternate assessment” (LDAA) began to participate, instead, in a single statewide assessment. Now, for the first time, many students with severe disabilities are taking part in an assessment of skills with a uniform structure and mandated academic content.
IEP teams decided what the LDAA should be. One of the most frequently chosen options was a portfolio assessment. Using this procedure, teachers kept work samples, pictures, video clips, and narratives as a record of student accomplishments. Other frequently used options included criterion-referenced curriculum-based checklists, developmentally-normed assessments, and various need-specific tools such as communication checklists. In most schools, content areas assessed were not academic and the IEP team determined adequate progress for each individual without comparing performance to a state standard.
In order to comply with legislative mandates in two federal acts, No Child Left Behind or the Elementary and Secondary Education Act [ESEA, 1111(h)] and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act [IDEA, 612(a)(15)], state education agencies must have two things:
For instance, in the spring of the 2006–2007 school year, Texas implemented the TAKS-Alt assessment. It tests only academics linked to age-equivalent grade-level academic content in the general education curriculum, and it does so with a uniform procedure so that each student can receive scores that can be compared to state proficiency standards. The driving force for this type of academic achievement testing is No Child Left Behind. This legislation is due for reauthorization by the United States congress and there are efforts from various consumer groups to try to influence legislators to change some of the testing rules.
Students with severe disabilities are going to receive more academic instruction during the school day. ESEA and IDEA have required for several years that all students have access to the general education curriculum. Now, students with severe disabilities will be assessed in the same academic areas as their enrolled grade-level peers. The areas tested usually consist of some combination of reading, math, writing, and science depending on the grade level. In Texas, which also assesses social studies, students will be assessed on six outcomes for each academic content area. In a given year, the minimum number of outcomes assessed for a student will be twelve. The maximum will be thirty. If academics have not been a part of students’ programs before, they will be now.
Priority needs are still determined by IEP teams. However, IDEA says that all children with disabilities must have IEPs that contain functional and academic goals (IDEA 300.320). Every IEP must contain academic goals whether the IEP team thinks they are a priority or not. The IEP team’s responsibility is to use their knowledge of the student to make informed choices about how many academic goals there should be, and to include those that are potentially the most meaningful. There is no mandate, nor does anyone advocate, that all tested academic skills should appear in the IEP. The IEP is not an academic curriculum. The IEP team must determine what other kinds of goals need to be included and in what proportions. The legislative mandate for individualized education programs that address unique needs identified by IEP teams has not changed (IDEA 300.320 through 300.324).
IDEA says that IEP teams must evaluate students to determine two things.
In order to make this determination, they must use a variety of tools to gather the following:
Three broad skill areas are mentioned in this part of IDEA having to do with gathering information to determine the content of the IEP: functional, developmental, and academic (300.304).
Dr. Diane Browder, a specialist in severe disabilities currently on the faculty at the University of North Carolina Charlotte, suggests that IEPs should include goals related to academic skills aligned with state standards, functional skills, social skills, therapy needs, and parent concerns. In this model, developmental needs might be addressed through “therapy” goals in areas like speech, OT, and PT. Many schools refer to these as “related service” rather than “therapy” goals, and include goals in the areas listed under “special factors” in IDEA (300.324). These include behavior, vision impairment, communication, auditory impairment, limited English proficiency, and assistive technology. Dr. Browder and her co-author, Ginevra Courtade-Little, give the following example.
Suzanne is in 5th grade and her IEP will be different this year. While she will continue to have goals related to her expanded use of an augmentative communication system, Suzanne will now also pursue goals that focus on her acquisition of daily living skills, like putting on her coat and personal grooming. In addition she will learn to participate in her IEP meeting by helping to choose her own goals and signing her name. What also will be different is that for the first time Suzanne will have some academic goals that promote her participation in the 5th grade curriculum. While Suzanne has had academic goals before- she learned to select a dollar for a purchase she wanted to make and was able to read pictures/sight words on her schedule- now she will have academic goals that focus on her state’s standards for 5th graders. For example, her new goals will help her gain meaning from chapter books read by peers and find solutions for everyday math problems. These changes will prepare Suzanne to participate in her state’s alternate assessment… (Courtade-Little, G., and Browder, D., 2005, p.7).”
A great deal of training is going on and a lot of literature is appearing referring to “standards-based IEPs”. In fact, this term is a little misleading. Only the academic goals in IEPs are aligned with state academic standards for grade-level achievement [ESEA, 1111(h) and IDEA, 612(a)(15)]. There are no state standards for functional or developmental skills. Some curricula in these areas give age norms indicating the age at which a typical child would have developed a certain skill. IEP teams use a variety of strategies to determine which skills in these areas are priority needs and should, therefore, be included in the IEP. They may choose a skill that would have been acquired by a typical child at a much earlier age because that skill is attainable at the current time when for some reason it was not before. Or, they may include it because it is an important skill and instruction is resulting in progress, but at a significantly slower rate than would occur for a typical child. In Courtade-Little and Browder’s example, Suzanne is a ten year old 5th grader who is learning to put on her coat. Putting on a coat is a skill acquired by typical children when they are about three years old. Suzanne’s IEP team has selected it as a priority for her even though it is not an age-equivalent peer skill. They may have done this because it is a parent concern, because her motor skills have improved to the point that she is now ready to advance to this skill level, or because the skill has never been addressed before but is attainable.
When basic developmental and functional skills are chosen for the IEP of an older student, the materials and the activity used for instruction must dignify the student. A ten year old student may be expanding his understanding of the cognitive skill of “cause and effect” by learning that a fan can turn a pinwheel during a science lesson on wind generated energy. No one wants this student to be stuck with a Fischer-Price Busy Box or a switch adapted drum-playing bear. However, it is equally disrespectful to expect this student to remain alert and cognitively challenged while sitting and listening to a peer read to him from the fifth grade science book, when his communication level is non-symbolic or early symbolic. The student with severe cognitive disabilities may enjoy the sound of his peer’s voice. That would make this a nice leisure activity, but it would not make it a learning opportunity. These are two extreme examples of ways to go wrong. Informed choices involve taking the best approaches and adapting them to come up with good individualized instruction. Hands-on manipulation of objects is the best way to learn cause and effect. Peer reading is a wonderful social opportunity. A peer could read a modified text about fans making wind and wind moving pinwheels. The short text could be read after each trial using the fan and pinwheel. The result could be learning a new cause and effect relationship, and expansion of vocabulary related to learning verbal labels for objects like “fan” and “pinwheel.” All learning is wonderful and valuable, even when it is delayed and non-academic!
There are two ways that achievement of developmental and functional goals are addressed.
IEP teams using annual reviews of the achievement evaluation to show progress in developmental and functional skill acquisition may have some difficulty showing progress for learners with severe disabilities. Many of the curriculum-based assessments in these areas have skills listed in increments too broad to show increases from year to year. Students with severe disabilities often end up with a lot of “emerging” skills and very few “mastered” skills. These curricula are extremely helpful to IEP teams when they are identifying areas of need, but any given item may need to be broken down into smaller increments of development in order for a student with severe disabilities to demonstrate achievement of that skill in a year.
There are no restrictions in ESEA or IDEA on the use of developmental or functional curricula. In Texas, educators often use the phrase, “There is only one curriculum.” They are referring to Texas senate bill 815. It states that school districts must use the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) when teaching the entire required general education curriculum, including both foundation and enrichment content areas. Previously TEKS was required for foundation areas like math and reading and was a “guideline” for enrichment content like health and fine arts. So, in Texas, there is only one general education curriculum. It is TEKS and, by law, children with disabilities must have access to it and they must be tested on academic achievement aligned with its content in reading, writing, math, science, and social studies.
IEP teams using annual goal progress as the accountability tool for developmental and functional skills need to make sure that they identify very specific skills in small, attainable increments as well. Old bad habits may need to be overcome. For many years, many schools have ignored the legislative mandate that annual goals be measurable and achieved in one year. Many IEPs contained annual goals like “Johnny will improve eating skills,” or “Johnny will feed himself independently.” In the first case, there is nothing to measure, and in the second, no chance, for Johnny, that the skill can be accomplished in one year. A real annual goal for Johnny might be something like “Johnny will self-initiate ten scoops of soft foods using an adapted spoon and dish during breakfast and lunch.” Progress milestones, benchmarks or short-term objectives, might include:
In this example, benchmarks relate to the research-based instructional approach of “scaffolding”, or support reduction, leading to higher levels of independence. If Johnny isn’t self-initiating scoops with an elbow prompt by the end of the second quarter, the IEP team will need to revise this goal. Revision could mean changing the goal, but it could also mean changing other things as well. Perhaps Johnny’s instruction has been in the school cafeteria. He is simply too distracted and/or stressed by the noise, movement, and smells in that environment to maintain attention on his scooping task. His team decides to take Johnny to the cafeteria ten minutes before the other students arrive. During this time he practices his scooping, and then he eats the rest of his meal with his peers. He is still a little bothered by the smells, but the lack of movement and noise is enough of an improvement to allow him to make steady progress on his goal.
Literature and training in the field of special education and in the area of severe disabilities is prevailingly oriented toward academic instruction in regular classrooms with typical peers. Part of the reason for this emphasis is that many students with disabilities have been denied these learning opportunities for many years. They have been segregated and, depending on the quality of the instruction in the self-contained environment, possibly under-challenged. Special education professionals in university pre-service programs, state departments of education, and many local school districts would like their students with severe disabilities to have high achievement standards and access to instruction in regular classrooms. Each IEP team must use both knowledge of the student and of research-based instructional strategies to make sure that one aspiration does not compromise the other. Decisions for individual students must be made on the basis of their unique needs. If the programs for two individuals with severe disabilities are exactly the same, somebody’s unique needs are not being met. That is why “special” education is provided.
Some of the strategies that work for students with severe disabilities have been well researched and have been used for many years. Examples include the following (Orelove, 2000).
IEP teams must identify the priority learning needs of the individual for whom they are planning a program. Then, they must think about the instructional activities and the settings that will support achievement of those skills. In every setting, a skilled professional will need to make sure that the instruction provided is highly effective in line with the research described above. Whether it is in self-contained special education classrooms or in regular classrooms, instruction provided for students with severe disabilities must be highly effective in order to develop skills.
Access to typical peers is important. Typical peers and children with disabilities should know and enjoy each other to the fullest extent possible. A clear commitment has been made in the professional community to try to make sure that highly effective instructional strategies are provided for students with severe disabilities in activities they share with typical peers as often as possible. Typical peers are not the providers of highly effective instruction, but they may have a carefully chosen and well-prepared part in that instruction. IEP teams must use their knowledge of individual students to determine who their instructional partners should be. They must watch carefully to evaluate how the quality of learning is affected by participation with various partners.
Making an assumption that peer access should be primary for all students with disabilities may be disrespectful to some special needs students. This kind of global assumption ignores a very real group of individuals who are not at the same level of social development as the students who are described in many of the examples of typical and disabled students engaged in co-operative learning. According to most developmental scales, showing interest in the activities of peers does not develop in typical children until about two years of age (Greenspan, 2004). Before interest in peers develops, there is an incredibly important stage of development in which children establish secure attachments with adults. They need this social/emotional foundation in order to be stable enough to grow in many areas of development. Early communication skill development is particularly dependent on healthy adult attachment (Chen, D., & Dote-Kwan, J., 1995). For some students with severe disabilities, strong attachments with adults in the school environment may be essential to their ability to develop skills.
The words “significant” and “severe” mean different things to different users. Sometimes the words are used somewhat interchangeably when referring to students with cognitive disabilities. “Significant” often replaces “severe” when people consider it to be less stigmatizing. But, sometimes one or the other word is used more intentionally to refer to a distinct group of individuals. Unfortunately, the words are not used consistently to describe the same groups. “Significant” and “severe” are used frequently to refer to students who do not have severe mental retardation as traditionally defined.
Two examples illustrate this point. First, in the training module for the Texas alternate assessment, a student with “the most severe cognitive disabilities” is shown using a calculator, number cards, and an equation template to reduce a recipe. Second, in one of many journal articles giving examples of students with “significant” disabilities participating in academic instructional activities with their typical peers, Cushing, et al, describe the following:
For example, in a third-grade language arts lesson during which the teacher expects all students to develop oral language and listening skills, the teacher may read an excerpt from a book and ask students questions related to the material. In this classroom, a student with significant cognitive disabilities also listens to the story, but he or she benefits when the teacher breaks each section down into smaller components and asks questions more frequently or poses them in a simplified manner. Moreover, the student may use an augmentative communication device or other alternative response format to answer the teacher’s questions. (Cushing, L., Clark, N., Carter, E., &Kennedy, C., 2005).”
The use of the word “severe” and the substitution of the word “significant” for “severe” when referring to students with mild and moderate mental retardation is a problem because students with severe mental retardation become invisible. In workshops with titles like “Aligning IEP’s with State Standards for Students with Severe Disabilities,” presenters tend to give many detailed examples of the application of their strategies for students at the mild and moderate levels of mental retardation and few, if any, examples of applications for students with severe mental retardation. Everybody would like to stay away from stigmatizing vocabulary. At the same time, every effort must be made to be sure that all levels of learning are acknowledged and respected by receiving the attention they deserve.
It may be helpful to look at the way “significant” and “severe” are used in law and resources.
The following (also illustrated in the chart below) shows how the words “significant” and “severe” are used by various users related to levels of mental retardation.
User: IDEA eligibility criterion for mental retardation
Term Used: “significantly sub-average…”
Mental Retardation Levels Included: Mild, moderate, severe, profound
User: Department of Education amendment to ESEA for alternate assessments
Term Used: “the most significant cognitive disabilities”
Mental Retardation Levels Included: Moderate, severe, and profound
User: Texas Education Agency, Assessment Division
Term Used: “the most severe cognitive disabilities”
Mental Retardation Levels Included: Moderate, severe, and profound
User: Low Incidence Disabilities (LID) networks in Texas and many other states
Term Used: severe cognitive disabilities
Mental Retardation Levels Included: Severe and profound
User: Most journal articles and workshop presentations
Term Used: significant disabilities
Mental Retardation Levels Included: Mild, moderate
| User | Term Used | Mental Retardation Levels Included |
|---|---|---|
IDEA eligibility criterion for mental retardation |
“significantly sub-average…” |
Mild, moderate, severe, profound |
Department of Education amendment to ESEA for alternate assessments |
“the most significant cognitive disabilities” |
Moderate, severe, and profound |
Texas Education Agency, Assessment Division |
“the most severe cognitive disabilities” |
Moderate, severe, and profound |
Low Incidence Disabilities (LID) networkds in Texas and many other states |
Severe cognitive disabilities |
Severe and profound |
Most journal articles and workshop presentations |
Significant disabilities |
Mild, moderate |
Students with severe mental retardation are equal and important members of the educational community whose needs, if addressed effectively and appropriately, result in learning as important as that of any other student. Most people would agree that academic skills increase the quality of life of typical students, plumbers earning more than teachers notwithstanding. Functional skills improve the quality of life for everybody. College students who have these skills don’t have to bring their laundry home for Mom to do, all the time at least. The post-secondary success of students with mild and moderate disabilities in both living and work environments is highly related to their functional proficiencies. Students with severe disabilities live higher quality lives when they attain developmental and some functional skills to the highest levels possible. Some educators minimize the importance of the life-long instruction of these kinds of skills. Perhaps this is because they feel that the degree to which they can be acquired is not significant. Sometimes lack of progress in these areas has been a result of poor instruction, not inability. And, sometimes, educators have failed to appreciate the dramatic impact of what appears to them to be a very small gain. Expansion of developmental skills can be horizontal as well as vertical. A student who uses an object to request an activity can vertically expand to using part of the object or a picture of it to show his communication partner what he wants. But, the student who continues to use objects for requesting can also develop new skills. He can learn to use objects for requesting what he wants in more and more activities and in all areas of his life. That is horizontal expansion and it increases the quality of life of not only the learner, but all of his partners as well.
IEP teams have been using the strategy of “embedding” for many years. In the 1980’s, educators were encouraged to shift the emphasis of IEPs from developmental skills to functional skills. Teachers and related service providers started embedding developmental skills in functional contexts. A student who had an annual goal that targeted the developmental motor skill of grasping and releasing might switch to a functional domestic goal of washing dishes. Clearly, grasping and releasing is part of washing dishes. Addressing the skill in this way helped to assure that students didn’t get stuck spending hours putting poker chips in a jar day after day. By listing the occupational therapist as one of the team members responsible for the instruction of the dishwashing goal, IEP teams ensured that instruction on, and adaptations for, grasping and releasing would be part of the dishwashing activity. Grasping and releasing would probably be an embedded developmental skill that would naturally occur in many functional skill activities.
IEP teams are encouraged to address academic skill instruction in two ways. The first is the one that has been discussed so far. That is, participating in the instruction provided for typical peers with appropriate adaptations and supports. The second is to embed the academic skill in a functional context. In Texas this is called “integrated” academic instruction. The student using a calculator to do operations with numbers in her classroom integrates that academic skill when she calculates the cost of her meal at a fast-food restaurant. Academic skills are also taught in functional activities by embedding. A student at the non-symbolic cognitive level who participates in a snack preparation activity every day might have an embedded science skill that requires him to show understanding of the life cycle of plants and animals by selecting ripe from unripe strawberries and by using the ripe berries to make a smoothie. This academic science skill embedded in a functional activity can still be aligned with state standards by making sure there is a clear link to the age-equivalent grade-level science content of the general education curriculum. In Texas, those links are described in the Framework document provided by the education agency.
The importance of functional skills for preparing students with disabilities for post-secondary environments is recognized by most educators and is acknowledged in legislation (IDEA, 300.320). Another reason functional skills are likely to continue to be a part of programs for students with severe disabilities is that they provide interesting, pleasurable contexts for embedding both developmental and academic skills. For students with severe disabilities, functional skill goals rarely aim at full independence. Rather, the goal for students with severe disabilities is to participate in these activities with the important people in their lives at the highest possible level. The most significant skills in these interactions are often the communication and social skills that allow the learner and his partner to collaborate to accomplish the given task. Functional skill activities may be a better medium for embedding than academic activities for some students with severe disabilities simply because they tend to be more concrete rather than abstract. They may also contain learning media that has more motivating sensory characteristics. That is to say, functional skill activities are more often about common objects in natural contexts while academic activities tend to be about more abstract concepts represented symbolically. The wonderful thing about every student having access to both kinds of instruction is that it is a safeguard. The accurate assessment of the aptitude, learning potential, of students with multiple impairments, especially those who have severe motor and sensory impairments, is extremely difficult. Some of those students have been waiting for the opportunity to show us what they can do given appropriate challenges.
Legislatively, it means school districts must show they are providing instruction that enables students to make progress toward performing academic skills at established state standards of proficiency. Schools are trying harder than ever to improve the quality of the instruction provided to students. Now, students with disabilities are part of that effort and, as a result, they are receiving instruction that includes academic learning opportunities. The challenge to special educators is to make sure that they are equally committed to accountability for achievement related to all legislatively mandated priority needs—developmental, functional, and academic-—in individualized programs providing appropriate education to each unique student.
Courtade-Little, G., & Browder, D. (2005). Aligning IEPs to academic standards for students with moderate and severe disabilities. Verona, Wisconsin: Attainment Company, Inc.
Cushing, L., Clark, N., Carter, E., &Kennedy, C. (2005). Access to the general education curriculum for students with significant cognitive disabilities. Teaching Exceptional Children, Vol. 38, No. 2, pp. 6-13.
Dote-Kwan, J., & Chen, D. (1999). Developing meaningful interventions. In D. Chen (ED.), Essential elements in early intervention: Visual impairments and multiple disabilities (pp. 287-336). New York: AFB Press.
Greenspan, S. (2004). The Greenspan social emotional growth chart: a screening questionnaire for infants and young children. San Antonio: Harcourt Assessment PsychCorp.
Orlove, F., & Sobsey, D. (2000). Educating Children with Multiple Disabilities a transdisciplinary approach. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Company, Inc. Posney, A. (July 11, 2006). Letter to California Department of Education. OSEP.
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