In the 1980s the head of curriculum at the Toronto Board of Education (TBE), told the board that special education, SE, was growing at an unsustainable rate up from 10% of enrolment and if unchecked was headed to 20%. The academic research assumed SE was a 5-10% issue. It is now a 15-25% situation depending on the broadening definition. 

 

SE in withdrawal self-contained groups of roughly 8 students per teacher is very expensive. In the 1980s two types of SE represented most SE kids in Toronto. The first were ‘’slow learners’’ and the second were ‘’learning disabilities’’ classes. Slow learners was a euphemism for sub 80 IQ students that had been previously known as ‘’retarded’’, a derogatory term by today’s standards.

 

Academics began to notice that SL classes were in the poor parts of town while LD classes were in the middle class areas. This led to all SE classes being renamed LD and seemed to mean ‘’the student was not learning quickly enough, and we’re not always sure why.’’ 

 

The severely disabled remained at 2-3% of enrolment, now labelled ‘’intellectually disabled’’ while the milder LD group exploded upwards after 2000, to include LD, ADHD, autism, and anxiety. The American Disabilities Act led to IEPs that needed accommodations. It was similar in Canadian provinces.

 

The USA is currently averaging 15% SE with a range of 12-18%. In Ontario Canada it is 16% in elementary but 28% secondary receiving ‘’some level of support’’. This can mean a Full IEP but partial or occasional support. 

 

Researchers have been trying to pin down the specific reasons for the explosion of SE. They break it down as follows:

 

1. Expanded definitions

2. Inclusion policies known to many teachers as ‘’mainstream everybody’’, it's cheaper and it gets the parents off our case. 

3. Funding incentives. More SE means more EAs psychologists, 

4. Academic expectations are rising, as the manufacturing industries disappear. 

 

As SE begins to cross the 20% mark, headed for 25%, the first alarm bells begin. The definitions were too broad, the integrated general education classes were becoming unmanageable, the diagnosis is replacing discipline and remediation. Diagnosis expansion is becoming diagnostic inflation. What was formerly referred to as ‘’immature, distracted, low academics, difficult, shy, poorly behaved, has now become ADHD, LD, emotional dysregulation disorder, and autism. 

 

Students in the past got correction, detention, suspension, even expulsion. Today they get behavioural plans, emotional regulation support, and a SE diagnosis.  

 

Researchers like Jonathan Haidt or Jean Twenge support the idea that the cause was ‘’institutional incentives’’. 

 

Parents are seeking accommodations, there  are funding incentives, there is reduced stigma, and the kids now have a legal disability that follows them to post secondary, even employment. 

 

Is it institutional expansion or is it real increases in neurodevelopmental conditions? According to the CDC, autism in 2000 was 1 in 150 kids. Today it is 1 in 36. 

This hypothesis links the cause to older parents having first children in their 40s, and premature birth survivors. Premature kids, in the past, often struggled, but many didn’t survive. Today they do survive, but often with academic and emotional or behavioural issues. 

 

There is academic pressure, due to standardized testing, for students to reach ever higher levels at even earlier ages, and for ever increasing results. 

 

Who should be mainstreamed?

 

We are at a critical crossroads with Special Education and inclusion or mainstreaming. Throughout the 1970-2000 period there was heavy pressure to mainstream or include children who needed support, from self contained SE classes into general education classes. Parents and academics noticed that racialized minorities and working class students, particularly the poor, were heavily overrepresented in withdrawal classes. 

 

Add to this the neurodivergent students and educated parents demanding mainstreaming, with its extra time for testing, audiobooks, easier tasks and the system seemed to throw up its hands and say ‘’mainstream or include everybody’’. 

 

Unfortunately, this created an entirely new set of problems as the more SE students were mainstreamed, the more chaotic general education classes became. Teachers’ unions have tried negotiations for ‘’class size and complexity’’ limits but this led to protracted strikes and bitter, mutual recrimination as boards try to maintain that it was a pedagogical issue. The results were minimal at best. Administrators would say, ‘’have you tried differentiation and scaffolding?’’ This has led to eye rolling from teachers, but little change. Consequently teachers began to retire early, increasingly leaving in their first 5 years, and even walking away mid career. Chronic teacher shortages are the result. 

 

There needs to be some sort of solution that involves give and take. Fortunately, researchers have looked at the issue and offer guidance as to who should be integrated and who should not. 

 

A recent research report, addressed in the Hechinger Report, is rattling the teacups across the special education world. Douglas Fuchs of Vanderbilt is questioning 50 years of pro-inclusion research and suggesting that there is a ‘’selection bias’’. Researchers controlled for demographics like SES or race or gender but appear to have ignored the ‘’severity’’ of the disability. Teachers are well aware that there is mild intellectual disability and there is severe intellectual ability. The same is true of behaviour, ODD, ADHD, autism, communication disorders, and so on. 

 

Fuchs is suggesting that inclusion should not be the default recommendation or even the majority recommendation for students with an IEP. 

 

Of course, inclusion can always be tried, and if the student is learning well, is not consuming inordinate amounts of teacher time, everybody else in the class is safe and learning on pace, and support is available, then at least give inclusion a chance, but when these characteristics are not met or not available then we need to retain special classes or even special schools. When the issue involves safety or persistent disruption, that is quite another matter. 

 

https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-special-education-inclusion-research-flawed/

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Students who can or should, be integrated:

1. Those with mobility issues, wheelchair bound, cerebral palsy, prosthetics, and some vision or hearing issues should usually be integrated. Those with mild ADHD as well.

2. Those with dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia

3. Those with average or above average intelligence.

4. Those who need instructional accommodations like extra time, modified assignments.

 

Those students who should probably not be integrated:

1. Those with severe behavioural disorders, aggression, outbursts, oppositional disorders, or those who need crisis interventions.

2. Those with severe autism, including sensory issues, severe communication disorders, meltdowns

3. Those with significant intellectual disabilities, those far below grade level, many years behind, or when the regular classroom content is inaccessible. If students are more than 1 year behind in elementary school reading or math they need, at least, partial withdrawal to boost basic skills.  

Many parents may resist this formulation, but those in charge of systems need to realize that teacher recruitment and retention is at stake. Huge numbers of teachers are concluding ‘’life is too short for this.’’ 

 

Moving the former streaming (tracking is USA) problem from too much segregation to too much integration doesn;t work. We need a more sophisticated approach.