The current special education system has been described as flawed (Kirst 1993), (Gallagher 1998) and for reasons having little if anything to do with teacher performance or declining ducational standards. Indeed since public education is heavily influenced by society proper – for example via curricula geared toward computer proficiency and other vocational/societal priorities - it is also reflective of what is occurring in our society at any given time. (Boyles 1998), (Dimitriadis, 2003) The parallel relationship between cultural mores and public education trickles down into the domain of special education.
One of the influences of society on the education system can be seen in how educators deal with a phenomenon known as the bell-shaped, or “normal” curve. In earlier times it was readily accepted that students’ abilities were distributed along the curve in a predictable manner. In that context, some students were considered “college material” while others were encouraged to go into trades or mechanical fields. Interestingly enough, educators back then (trapped within the confines of personal bias) often assumed the college-bound students were more “able.” In fact, if one were to interpret the normal curve correctly, it would reflect a distribution of all abilities - academic and otherwise - in terms of percentiles and standard deviations. That would imply that some students lower on the normal curve with respect to language, reading and math abilities might be on the upper end with regard to mechanical and spatial reasoning abilities. By the same token, some of their more academically-skilled brethren might be lower with respect to mechanical-spatial abilities. (As a side note; since, in the course of human cultural advancement, tool making has often superseded in time and importance the advent of letters and numbers (including Gutenberg’s printing press) putting college-bound students at the top of the totem pole might be somewhat dubious).
Since the human brain consists of roughly twenty five million neurons with billions of interconnections, there are bound to be variations, slight errors and atypical trends in child development. In other words, to expect a brain with such volume and complexity to develop exactly the same for each child – even aside from disparate genetic contributions from each parent - would be absurd. In some instances those variations (all normal within a broad neuro-developmental framework) might comprise what modern educators refer to as a learning disability.
As American society has become more egalitarian, and we as a people have essentially decided that the differences between individuals and groups are less important than previously assumed, the trend toward hyper-academization in the schools has occurred. Pressures to demonstrate student competence as measured by achievement tests, as well as advanced curricula with a conceptual approach (where third graders are expected to grasp geometry and algebra concepts as well as vocabulary words they might never use even as adults) have created what could be referred to as a “disability fail-safe” requiring that all students either fit into the college-bound category or be identified with a handicap.
Parents have been influenced by this trend as well. Many want their children to be identified so they can receive support services, under the assumption that this will lead to dramatic gains in various academic skills, and more specifically, so they will catch up to their peers. Unfortunately, some research indicates that even after years of special education such gains do not often occur, at least in terms of the catch-up criterion (Stager 2006).
Obviously students can receive vocational training at the high school level, and in some districts earlier than that. However, it raises the question of how effective special education training is and whether in the final analysis, trying to swim against a tide known as the normal curve is a feasible endeavor.
Some aspects of modern curricula seem particularly problematic. The increasingly conceptual and sophisticated curriculum programs in the public schools do not suit the needs of many students. As a result, one could reasonably ask whether both the normal curve and developmentally inconsonant curricula are responsible for the increasing number of students identified with learning disabilities. It presents a dilemma for educators who genuinely want all their students to learn necessary skills but who must, each and every day of their professional lives, act in defiance of the normal curve and the constraints of child development.
Some have discussed these problems, for example Allen (1998) and Dimitriadis (2003) and in response to this issue, new trends have emerged in the area of special education. One is Response to Intervention, which advocates for direct service without need of multiple evaluations, uses a pre and post academic performance criteria to determine whether a particular teaching method or curriculum is appropriate and enables educators to determine whether, in light of a student’s response to these approaches, he is indeed disabled.
RTI is an interesting phenomenon, albeit a bit paradoxical. It is new, yet in some ways a recapitulation of methods used by teachers prior to the advent of special education, when spending more time with needy students and making or finding curriculum materials compatible with their abilities was fairly common. RTI represents a kind of rebellion against the classical special education philosophy yet operates according to the same premises; specifically that some students have disabilities and that the normal curve has relatively little bearing on what proficiencies and deficits any child might have. It also presumes that across-the-board grade-level academic performances can be achieved by most students if the right methods and curriculum materials are used.
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