How Effective is Special Education - Term Paper Example

? How effective is Special Education? How effective is Special Education? Introduction Many people face some sort of disabilities such as learning or communication difficulties, physical disablements, intellectual or mental disorders, behavior or emotional disturbances, and development challenges. Such disabilities and learning challenges turn special needs of the individuals possessing those difficulties that are essentially needed to be addressed through special education. Individuals with special needs are provided with additional assistance and programs, specialized learning environments, placements and instruments, and special help and support to increase their involvement in education. The extent to which a disabled or special person is given special educational assistance and instructions varies according to the special needs and requirements of the person. Special education governance comes under federal law, and the variety and quality of special education is dependent on the educational jurisdiction which sets rules and regulation, educational policies, and legislation regarding special education. Some laws even require the provision of specially designed education and instructions to be costless.1 There are a number of schools specially developed for handicapped and disabled children to meet their needs by providing them proper and adequate learning environment where they can enhance their educational learning. The specialized educational instructions and support and services rendered to the students in such schools ameliorate their academic performance, and create a relatively moderate impact on children’s behavior and ability to acquire betterment. However, there has been a great debate over the issue regarding the effectiveness of special education in special education schools whether these efforts really improve their performance. This paper argues that the special education is indeed essential and effective based on other factors that can intensively influence the condition of students with disabilities. Special Education’s Effectiveness Special education literature review and investigation by preeminent scholars in special education suggest the effectiveness of special education to be reliable. A thorough study and analysis have been taken to test the extent to which efficacious special educational techniques have been formulated for handicapped and disabled students, the proper application and implementation of those techniques and the uniqueness of usage and employment of these techniques in special educational settings. Strong evidence has been found for the development of effective, affirmed methods and techniques through empirical observation for students with disabilities to predominantly practice in their educational treatments, but the authentic implementation of such policies has not been considered important on regular basis and in good faith.2 A wide variety of research has been undertaken to challenge the effectuality and adequacy of specialized educational interventions to meet the special needs of students. Such literature evidence has shown that in order to provide the specialized educational interventions to mildly handicapped students, various programs and models have been developed which can be implemented in both regular and special educational settings and also can have social impacts on the disabled students. Yet, the specially designed methods for treatment of special children have not been effective up to the extent that obviates the impairment completely. Except few cases, the students having impairments cannot make commensurable improvements as compared to the students who are nondisabled and require regular education. Even special students in groups having learning difficulties have not shown betterments equivalent to nondisabled students who perform at a level below average. To be efficacious, generally the treatments for disabled students should include sensibly personalized pedagogies and intensive aid, coupled with recording and supervising of the advances of such students. Moreover, various research literatures have suggested that educational interventions provided in special settings are considerably different from the education in regular settings. This has reasoned that the differing needs and requirements are to be fulfilled with models and programs that are essentially designed for disabled students which can in turn enhance their achievement level and progress. The development of these effective interventions requires a substantial investment of resources, significant amount of time, considerable efforts and all-inclusive assistance for instructors to ameliorate academic performance and results for students with disablements. However, all disabled students cannot evidence the validity of the research as the wide differences in the needs of students and individualized methods to meet the special needs. But the research study can suggest the importance of special education with adequate resources for handicapped students.3 There is another widely accepted practice, which deteriorates the perceptive effectiveness of special education and the instructional techniques to handle students with disabilities, which is known as inclusion. The students who have educational needs that are not associated with any impairments are referred to be at-risk, are frequently placed in classes with students who have physical or psychological disabilities. This action is criticized by many special education analysts and scholars as placing both types of students, with exceptionally different needs, in same class may hinder the educational progress and development of individuals with disabilities.4 Such exercise of inclusion of students with disabilities in classrooms of non-disabled students has also been criticized by advocates and some parents of children with disabilities and special needs since some of those handicapped students require instructional methods and curative interventions that differ dramatically from distinctive classroom methods. Evaluators and advocates who criticized such practice have asserted that it is not potentially possible to deliver efficaciously more than one extremely different instructional methods in the same classroom. Consequently, the educational advancement of students who depend on specialized instructional methods to learn diminishes a great deal even far more than that of their compeers. Parents of typically developing children with disabilities more often are feared with the issue that the special needs of a single student which is amply included will take vital levels of care, attention and energy away from the rest of the students of the class and thereby spoil the academic and social accomplishments and skills of all students.5 Some advocates, parents and students are even greatly concerned about the eligibility criteria, and their practical application and effectiveness. Moreover, in some cases, parents and students manifest objection against the students' placement into special education programs. For instance, a student may be placed into the special education settings because of a mental health status such as depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, panic attacks or ADHD, anxiety, etc. though the parents and students conceive that the condition is adequately dealt with by medication and outside therapy. In addition, other cases involve students whose parents consider they require the additional help and support for provision of special education services are refused to allow their participation in the special education program based on the eligibility criteria.6 Generally, the measurement of effectiveness of special educational training and instructions to have a relatively acute influence on the physical and mental condition of student is based on exams and observational patterns. The quality of such assessment tests and designed experiments is usually challenged for being inadequate and blemished which consequently questions the effectiveness of special education. This can give a strong argument to show that special education is effective enough to improve students’ psychological and physical impairments, but the methods and tools used to evaluate the performance of special students are flawed and not reliable.7 There has been a number of convincing manifestations regarding the effectiveness of pedagogies specially designed for mildly handicapped children for curative programs to achieve narrowly defined and specific objectives. To get responsively better outcomes, the focus of evaluation should not be switched to more complicated programs that are contrived to attain a more complete remediation of academic and social skill shortages. It is also suggested that severe methodological defects in these evaluation endeavors cause imperfectness in knowledge and practical implementations regarding the issue of effectiveness of special education.8 According to Douglas (1988), this can be a rational reason to use the time series analysis approach, a practicable evaluation tool for examining the extent of influence special education has on cognitive and physical disabilities of particular students by considering the responses of such students which vary according to educational treatments they receive. A study was conducted, presenting an efficacious approach, to observe the impact of regular and special education on 11 gently disabled children by analyzing the instructional environment of the children in their regular and special education circumstances. The study facilitated the analysis of these students’ inclination toward betterment on weekly curriculum-based measures (CBM) reading scores, and suggested that special education is a substantial educational treatment having a crucial impact on handicapped children.9 Conclusion Summing up all the above discussed studies and evidences, the conclusion can be drawn in a way that special education is effective enough to meet the special need of physically and mentally disabled students, if the students are placed in different classes according to their learning requirements. There is a great need of developing individualized programs and specially designed techniques to those fulfill the special needs of those students, and the criteria for monitoring and evaluating performance of such students should also be changed from the students without disabilities. Works Cited AM, Hocutt., Effectiveness of special education: is placement the critical factor? (1996) Web 30 Nov 2011, from: Amanda M. Vanderheyden; Joseph C Witt, Gale Naquin. "Development And Validation Of A Process For Screening Referrals To Special Education" (2003). School Psychology Review. Web 30 Nov 2011 Carol A. Breckenridge; Candace Vogler. "The Critical Limits of Embodiment: Disability's Criticism" (2001). Public Culture. Duke University Press. pp. 349–357. Web 30 Nov 2011 Cook, Bryan G., What Is Special About Special Education? Overview and Analysis. THE JOURNAL OF SPECIAL EDUCATION (2003) Web 30 Nov 2011, from: Greenwood, CR., "Longitudinal analysis of time, engagement, and achievement in at-risk versus non-risk students" (1991). pp. 521–35. Web 30 Nov 2011 Marston, Douglas., The Effectiveness of Special Education: A Time Series Analysis of Reading Performance in Regular and Special Education Settings. THE JOURNAL OF SPECIAL EDUCATION (1988) Web 30 Nov 2011, from: Tindal, Gerald., Investigating the Effectiveness of Special Education: An Analysis of Methodology. THE JOURNAL OF LEARNING DISABILITIES (1985) Web 30 Nov 2011, from: < http://ldx.sagepub.com/content/18/2/101> Watson, Sue., What is Special Education? Special Education (2011). Web 30 Nov 2011, from: Read More