Special Education Today

Our tour of the Republic of Korea has been wonderful. The temples, the foods, and (especially) the people have been quite delightful. Although Pat Lloyd and I have been seeing some sights, I've also been meeting with special educators in Changwon, Busan, and Seoul.

In his column entitled "Rights, Wrongs and the Real Task for D.C. Schools" for the Washington (DC, US) Post, Colbert I. King discussed the difficult issues that the Washington schools face. He casts the column as a conflict among the visions of three men who are well known to Washington ...

The Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER) is a project that conducts research on a variety of questions, including factors that affect teachers' effectiveness. CALDER is a collaboaration among researchers at the Urban Institute's Education Policy Center, Duke University, Stanford University, the University of Florida, the ...

Sometimes it just gets to me. Learning Upgrade may have fabulous products that produce wondrous outcomes for students (I do not know whether the company does), but I'm not buying those products on the basis of testimonial evidence. The Web site's blog offers testimonial statements (e.g., "Reading Upgrade Helps Texas ...

In The Know: Are Our Children Learning Enough About Whales?Sometimes things just get away from me. In this nifty parody of debates about education from the Onion, there are some fun pokes at familiar arguments. I'm not sure which one is my favorite; people will probably consider different ones funnier ...

Over on Kitchen Table Math Catherine Johnson has a note about several articles on creativity she'd read recently. Upon seeing the entry, I remembered that there are several very interesting?at least to me?behavioral studies of creativity. So I slipped over to the site for the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis ...

Folks, I don't use a fancy stats package and, even if I did, I'd only have a passing idea of who visits Teach Effectively. So, I'm running a poll for the next week or so in which I'm asksing visitors to indicate their connection to education in general and Teach ...

For a long time I had no problems with spammers who ran scripts that sign-up bogus users for my blogs. But recently, there's been a spate of them. Yesterday, I eliminated these accounts: ID #51: barsikjak, ID #52: barsikjal, ID #55: beepbeek, ID #54: beepbeet, ID #58: derisgun, ID #50: barsikjan, ...

O.K. Maybe there are only five visitors to Teach Effectively! At least, that's the total number of votes on the current pole about roles. So, I'm moving the voting booth over here...putting it in plain sight.

The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC), an initiative of the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences that is currently under contract to American Institutes of Research, released several sets of new reports. The reports cover topics in (a) beginning reading, (b) drop-out prevention, (c) early childhood education, (d) elementary ...

The US National Center on Educational Statistics, a part of the Institute for Education Sciences, issued a report about special education. In the report, billed as an "issue brief" and published in March of 2007, Emily W. Holt, Daniel J. McGrath, and William L. Herring describe the results of a ...

Here is the content of a statement by Grover J. Whitehurst, Director of the Institute of Education Sciences, announcing the expiration of Ed Kame'enui's term as Commissioner of Special Education Research. Dr. Kame’enui joined the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) from the University of Oregon in July 2005 under the provisions ...

For those who missed the series of talks about response to intervention at the 2007 meeting of the Council for Exceptional Children, the presenters' slides are available from Teach Effectively. The presenters included Dixie Huefner (University of Utah) and Perry Zirkel (Lehigh University) Yvonne Bui (University of San Francisco), Jose Luis Alvarado ...

A friend of mine decided to enter a "public radio talent quest" by doing a piece on NCLB. It's too late to enter the voting (and I found out too late as well), but you may get a kick out of his entry. This guy is not an ...

The University of Hawai'i at Manoa is offering assiatance to doctoral students interested in developing expertise in special education and one or more of the following areas: distance education, multi-cultural education, and evidence-based practices. Click on the this link to download a PDF with further information or contact Mary Jo ...

If you're interested in legal aspects of RTI, I've recently added the passouts from Perry Zirkel's talk at CEC in April 2007 to the list of documents available from the day-long session on RTI that I hosted. Here's a link.

According to a poll, people in the USA are concerned about the political opinions of professors. Zogby Poll: Most Think Political Bias Among College Professors a Serious Problem: Four in 10 said the problem is "very serious;" Tenure seen as harmful to teaching quality As legislation is introduced in more than ...

The Maryland (MD, US) state department of education is moving to close special education facilities, requiring students to attend neighborhood schools instead, according to a story entitled "Special-ed backers scramble to save learning centers" by Marcus Moore. In his article, published in Gazette Net, Mr. Moore reported that Maryland Superintendent ...

News sources are publishing an AP story by Mitch Stacy about a jury that found a physician liable for failing to diagnose a case of the genetic disorder Smith-Lemli-Optiz syndrome (SLOs) and awarded the parents $21 million. In his story, entitled "$21 Million Awarded for 'Wrongful Birth,'" Mr. Stacy explains ...

Late in July 2007, the National Center for Education Statistics of the US Department of Education released a report by William L. Herring, Daniel McGrath, Jacquelyn Buckley that describes the students who receive special education services during the elementary years. Following a longitudinal cohort across the elementary grades, the report ...

One might hypothesize that inclusion promotes better social outcomes for students with Learning Disabilities, especially in the area of self-concept. One might reasons that, if they are not segregated from their non-disabled peers, students with Learning Disabilities will not feel that they are different and inferior. Or one might theorize that inclusion has negative effects [...]

Over on EBD Blog I posted an entry about research on young children with ADHD. Some folks might find it interesting.

Brian Aldridge, who is a Republican member of the Mississippi House of Representatives, continues to seek ways to fund a initiative that will screen young children for reading problems, according to Ginny Miller of the Northeast Mississippi (MS, US) Daily Journal from June of 2007. As noted earlier, the problem is not getting the legislation, [...]

My colleague Daniel T. Willingham writes a regular column for the American Educator and I was reminded of one of those columns when someone asked me about teaching reading comprehension to students with Learning Disabilities. The article is entitled, “The Usefulness of Brief Instruction in Reading Comprehension Strategies” and it appeared in the winter 2006-2007) [...]

Sometimes the press gets something right on the $$. Julie Henry of the Great Britian (UK) Sunday Telegraph did in her coverage of efforts to thwart the spread of fertalizer about learning styles. Writing under the headline “Professor pans ‘learning style’ teaching method,” Ms. Henry has this lead: A leading scientist has dismissed the latest approach [...]

The Monitor of Kampala (UG) has published a series of articles by Gifty Quarcoo about Learning Disabilities. The articles appear to be aimed at advancing the general public’s understanding of Learning Disabilities. As one might expect for articles aimed at the general public, the content is general. I am glad to see that Learning Disabilities are [...]

Seeing the stories by Ms. Gifty Quarcoo from Africa reminded me that the special issue of Learning Disabilities Research & Practice (LDR&P) on international perspectives on Learning Disabilities is progressing toward publication. I don’t see an previous references to it in entries here on LD Blog, so let me note it here. A marvelous group [...]

In case you missed it (I did), the Dore program was embroiled in a bit more controvery in the winter of 2007, enough to merit an editorial in Nature Neuorscience. The editorial recounts the resignation of members of the professional editorial board of Dyslexia over publication of two studies of the Dore treatment, points out [...]

I’m not in my usual geographical space this AM. It’s also not my usual sonic space; I’m listening to a local radio station while I’m having coffee in Cool Beans on the west side of Richmond (VA, US). On the radio I just heard a 30-sec advertisement aimed at parents and seeking children who manifest [...]

Joseph Torgesen—a leading authority on reading psychology, reading instruction, and uses of technology in reading (as well as an all-around good guy)—has written a brief piece on what teachers should look for when considering educational software for reading. It’s at TeachingLD.org (scroll to the bottom of the page for “Expert Connection” and follow the links).

Multisystemic Therapy, on which I've reported previously, received another boost recently. Over on Social Programs that Work, a new study was added to the corpus of studies supporting the efficacy of Multisystemic Therapy. The new study by Jane Timmons-Mitchell and colleagues extends the literature about the value of this method ...

Over at Respectful Insolence Orac has a worth-a-read post about a law suit arising from the use of chelation as a therapy for Autism. Chelation, in this sense, is a process in which a compound that binds to metal atoms is injected into a person in hopes of extracting those ...

NECTAC siteThe US Deparment of Education funds the National Early Childhood Technical Assistance Center (NECTAC) at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) and NECTAC provides some resources that are of value to those of us concerned about children and youths with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders. In particular, see their ...

Caution: Irreverant humor ahead. The Onion, which publishes (sometimes scatological or profane) humor about nearly anything, has a parody of the person-in-the-street poll under the headline "202 Chemicals Linked To ADHD, Autism."

In the fall of 2006 Scott Kollins, Laurence Greenhilll, James Swanson and a host of colleagues described the Preschool ADHD Treatment Study (PATS; funded by the US National Institute of Mental Heath or NIMH) in one of a series of articles in the prestigious Journal of the American Academy of ...

I have come across two studies about the causes of Autism in CA [as in California (US), not as in Canada] that are worthy of note. First, there's a provactive story about an epidemiological study of the relationship between insecticides sprayed on agricultural fields and the incidence of Autism in ...

Canadian TV published a brief post under the headline "Ontario to expand autism therapists training" indicating that the Ministry of Children and Youth Services (MCYS) will fund training at several locations in Ontario (CA). A college certificate program in Ontario is being expanded to train more therapists to treat children ...

Prepare to open your browser window wide: The Autism Calendar for August 2007 is available here.

Under the headline, "What Autistic Girls Are Made Of" in the New York (NY, US) Times, Emily Bazelon has a feature article about selected issues that are associated with Autism among females. Ms. Bazelon, who also writes for Slate, provided a sensitive and nuanced portrait that includes discussions with ...

The print version of the New Yorker for 13 August 2007 includes an article called "An Erorr in the Code" with a sub-heading of "A syndrome poses questions about free will." In the article, Richard Preston examines developments in medicine's understanding of Lesch-Nyhan syndrome, the baffling genetic disorder that is ...

Time out (TO) is a procedure for decreasing behavior (i.e., a punishment procedure). To be used effectively, it must be used very judiciously and with great fidelity. The following story illustrates how not to use TO.

Autistic Child’s Parents Concerned Over 3-Hour School Time-Out: District, Agency Appeals

DES MOINES, Iowa — Parents of an 8-year-old autistic girl, who attended a Waukee elementary school, want changes made in time-out policies after their daughter was shut in an empty room for three hours.

Doug and Eva Loeffler said they were shocked after viewing a videotape of their daughter, Isabel, who had wet her pants and was struggling to obey the rules so she would be freed from isolation.

Read different versions of the Associated Press story:

• LMTV;
• KLEM;
• Sioux City Journal;
• topix.com;
• EIN News.

One of the problems that we’ll have to address with this site is establishing what does and does not count as behavior modification. There is a general or lay-public use of the term “behavior modification” and then there is a more technical use that is closer to “behavior analysis.” I’d like this site to tilt in the direction of the latter. Many different objects or events can modify behavior, but procedures based on behavior analytic research should be the focus of BehaviorMod.info.

The entry under “Behavior modification” in WikiPedia is not bad. As this site evolves, some participants might discuss strengths and weaknesses of that entry and, perhaps, even edit it.

How would I define behavior modification? Easy: Behavior modification is the systematic manipulation of environmental variables to cause predicted changes in people’s behavior. One may substitute “organisms” for people, of course, because the same behavior-analytic principles that describe how to affect people’s behavior also apply to other animals.

Oh, and that word, “manipulate.” Does it make some folks uneasy? Well, take it in the sense of how one handles tools (environmental variables, in this case), not in the sense of controlling in an unscrupulous way.

What’s not behavior mod, in the sense that I hope we use the term? I won’t go into the marvelous detail that I vaguely remember from an article by Israel Goldiamond (though I ought to reread it), but here are some notes:

• Reducing behavior: Indeed, behavior modification procedures can be used to decrease the frequency of behavior, but they can also be used to increase behavior, teach new behavior, and cause many other changes, too.
• Drugs: To be sure, pharmaceuticals can alter behavior, but as a therapy, they operate on the individual differently
• Domination: Behavior modification procedures can be used unscrupulously to subjugate others, but they also can be used for humane outcomes, including such desirable results as enabling people to exercise self-control.
• Etc.: Please add to this list.

Goldiamond, I. (1974). Toward a constructional approach to social problems: Ethical and constitutional issues raised by applied behavior analysis. Behaviorism, 2(1), 1-84.

Welcome to Special Education Today. Special Education Today provides the latest from special education blogs, up-to-date links to resources about special education, in-depth coverage of selected special education topics, current research information, and more. Special Education Today covers diverse disabilty categories, including Learning Disabilties, Emotional and Behaivoral Disorders, Intellectual Disabilities, and Autism, as well as disorders related to or subsumed under these categories (e.g., bi-polar disorder, ADHD or attention-deficit disorder, depression, Down Syndrome, etc.). Although its primary focus is on special education during the school years, Special Education Today also provides information about disabilities during the pre-school and post-school years.

As Special Education Today develops, it will add new features. We welcome your recommendations about what we should include. Please jump to the comments page and send a note.

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