How Effective is Special Education - Research Paper Example

How Effective is Special Education? Introduction There are a large number of people who are suffering from 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 have turned to be special needs of the individuals who possess those difficulties, and 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 of the person. Special education governance comes under federal law, and the variety and quality of special education depend on the rules and regulation, educational policies, and legislation regarding special education. These policies and rules are formulated by educational jurisdiction. Specially designed education and instructions are provided to the students at no costs to parents (Watson 2011). There are a number of schools especially developed for children with disabilities to meet their special needs by providing them proper and adequate learning environment where they can develop and enhance their educational skills. 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 abilities to acquire improvement. However, there has been a great debate over the issue of the effectiveness of special education on conditions of students in these schools that to what extent the special educational efforts and learning environment really improve their performance. This paper argues that the special education is indeed essential for special children and also effective enough to intensively influence the conditions of students with disabilities based on other related factors. Discussion Many preeminent scholars in special education have undertaken special education literature reviews and investigation and suggested that special education is effective and reliable in many cases. A thorough study and analysis of special needs have been conducted to measure that to what extent the efficacious special educational techniques have been formulated for students with disabilities. The proper application and implementation of those techniques and determination of the uniqueness in usage of these techniques in special educational settings are considered to other important factors. Strong evidence has been found for the development of effective and supported methods and techniques through empirical observation of students with disabilities. Although, these methods and techniques have been predominantly practiced for disabled students’ educational treatments, but the authentic implementation and monitoring of such educational policies has not been important focused on regular basis (Cook 2003). Majority of research has challenged the effectuality and adequacy of specialized educational interventions to meet the special needs of students. Studies and literature evidence have 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. Such programs and models can have academic and social impacts on the disabled students in positive manner. 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 quickly as 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, and proper recording and supervising of the improvements 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 outcomes for students with disablements. However, all disabled students cannot evidence the validity of the research because of the wide differences in the needs of students and individualized methods to meet the special needs. But the research study has suggested that the special education is importance with adequate resources for handicapped students (Hocutt 1996). There is another widely accepted practice, known as inclusion, which deteriorates the perceptive effectiveness of special education and the instructional techniques to handle students with disabilities. The students who have educational needs that are not associated with any impairments are known as ‘at-risk students’, are frequently placed in classes with students who have physical or psychological disabilities. This action is criticized by many analysts and scholars of special education as placing both types of students with exceptionally different needs in same class may hinder the educational progress and development of individuals with disabilities (Greenwood 1991). 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, 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 efficaciously deliver 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, who is amply included in regular education settings, 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 (Carol and Candace, 2001). Although, some advocates and scholars of inclusion have asserted that moderately handicapped children will show improvement in their self-perceptions when placed full time in regular educational settings. Majority of research has suggested that the self-concept of students with learning disorders is meliorated the most in the separated or isolated settings from others. Several studies have indicated that children with learning disabilities in regular education environments had significantly more pathetic self-perceptions of academic competency and social behavior than their nondisabled peers. The students with learning disabilities who were getting specific education in specialized programs, considered themselves as more efficient and skilled academically than did similar students with disabilities that were getting general education (Hocutt 1996). Some advocates, parents and students are even greatly concerned about the eligibility criteria of admission in special classes, 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 participate in the special education program based on the eligibility criteria (Amanda and Joseph, 2003). 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 in turn 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 (Marston 1988). There are a number of convincing manifestations regarding the effectiveness of pedagogies and curative programs specially designed for mildly handicapped children 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 efforts cause imperfectness in knowledge and practical implementations of effective special education (Tindal 1985). According to Marston (1988), the time series analysis can be a reasonable and rational approach to evaluate the results of special education. It is 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 conducted has presented 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. Usually in evaluating special education’s effectiveness, people are inclined to concentrate on the correlation between participation of students with disabilities in such programs and betterments in their intelligence, specifically increments in IQ scores. An article titled ‘What Is So Special About Special Education?’ the authors Detterman and Thompson asserted that special education has not been as effective as people think of it to be. The authors have reasoned out that the special education methods and programs would continue to break down until “individual differences in student characteristics beyond IQ scores are recognized and understood and educators focus on specific and realistic goals for outcome” (Detterman 1997). Other researchers Keogh and MacMillan (1998) have suggested these claims to be false in their article named ‘The Real World of Special Education’, and disclosed that Detterman’s article miscarried. The author indicated that Detterman’s article did not use stratified samples and provided pathetic illustrations of special education students, and also used the method of alleviated communication, which have never been adopted worldwide. Keogh and MacMillan’s article has indicated that special needs of majority of students with disabilities cannot be addressed by focusing merely on the effects of special education on particular cognitive abilities of the students even if they are getting special education assistance and support.1 Conclusion It is not possible to draw broad conclusions about all individual students with disabilities, and even within groups. Even differentiations among categories of disabilities are not clearly specified and absolute as there is a wide range of severity within categories of disability. However, it is appropriate and necessary to carefully consider some extensive groups of students with moderately similar disabilities or impairments to realize their special needs and the services they require. 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 needs 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 different from that of evaluating the students without disabilities. In another article titled ‘In Defense of Special Education’, the author Ramey (1998) has indicated that long-term positive academic and social benefits of specialized educational programs include overall “academic achievement, reduced rates of crime, decreased teen pregnancy, increased high school graduation rates, and increased employment” (Ramey 1998). The researcher’s determinations have evidenced that special education actually assists handicapped students to heighten their academic performance and achievement, which consequently helps such student from getting collapsed and produces brilliant opportunities for their future.2 Works Cited Hocutt.AM, 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