U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
PRESIDENT'S COMMISSION ON
EXCELLENCE IN SPECIAL EDUCATION
Monday,
February 25, 2002
Versaille Warwick Hotel
5701 Main Street
Houston, Texas
PANEL MEMBERS
TERRY BRANSTAD, CHAIRMAN
ADELA ACOSTA
WILLIAM BERDINE
BETH ANN BRYAN
PAULA BUTTERFIELD
JAY CHAMBERS
ALAN COULTER
FLOYD FLAKE
THOMAS FLEMING
JACK FLETCHER
DOUGLAS GILL
BRYAN HASSEL
DOUGLAS HUNTT
C. TODD JONES
C. REID LYON
ROBERT PASTERNACK
MICHAEL RIVAS
CHERIE TAKEMOTO
KATIE WRIGHT
A G E N D A
ITEM PAGE:
Welcome, Introductions, and Overview 3
NAS Minority Students in Special and 15
Gifted Education Report Briefing
Dr. Daniel Reschly
Dr. Sharon Vaughn
Commissioner Q&A for the NAS Panel 53
Panel on Discrepancy Model Research 120
Dr. David Francis
Dr. Sharon Vaughn
Commissioner Q&A on Discrepancy Model Research 161
Aligning State and Local Special Education 207
and Accountability Systems
Mr. Larry Gloeckler
Commissioner Q&A on Aligning Special Education 258
and Accountability Systems
Student Achievement, Due Process, and the 304
Relationship Between the Two
Mr. James ComstockGalagan
Mr. Gene Lenz
Commissioner Q&A on the Student Achievement, 354
Due Process, and Relationship
Between the Two Panel
Adjournment 373
P R O C E E D I N G S
MR BRANSTAD: Good morning. I am Terry
Branstad, the chairman of the President's Commission on
Excellence in Special Education. I welcome you to the
second Commission meeting and the first of its eight
regional hearings. Before we open our hearing and listen
to our witnesses, I want to briefly describe the
Commission, its mission, and its objectives.
The Commission was establish last October by
the executive order of President Bush. His goal in
establishing the Commission was a simple one: "No child
left behind." This has become a familiar and important
message.
"No child left behind" was the guiding
principle of the newly reauthorized Elementary and
Secondary Act. Now, it comes into play with the work of
this Commission.
Why? When President Bush says, "no child left
behind" he means children with disabilities most of all
because they are the children who most often are left
behind. This Administration is committed to the
proposition that every child can learn, and so is this
Commission.
At the outset, I must reaffirm that the
Commission's work is not designed to replace the upcoming
reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act.
Rather, the report we produce and issue this
summer will provide vital input into not only the
reauthorization process but also the national debate on
how best to educate all children.
When many of us think of Federal reports we
think of dense volumes with the type of prose Mark Twain
labeled "chloroform in print." We don't want that.
I hope the Commission will bring forward a
dynamic, informative report that will make a real
contribution to our nation's education debate.
I want a report that parents and classroom
teachers can use and understand a report that's readable
and interesting.
My goal for the Commission's work is simple: I
want us to find out "what works" best for educating
children with disabilities, not what works best for the
Federal, state and local agencies.
In order to learn what works best, we will
listen to the experts; look at research; talk with
parents, teachers and children; and think broadly and
creatively.
The President has charged us with providing
findings and recommendations in the following nine areas:
1. Costeffectiveness. The Commission will
examine the appropriate role of the Federal Government in
special education programming and funding. The Commission
will look at those factors that have contributed to
growing costs of providing special education services.
2. Improving Results. The Commission will
examine how to best use Federal resources to improve the
success of children and youth with disabilities.
3. Research. Understanding what works and
what doesn't work based on sound research data is critical
to making the best use of Federal resources.
The Commission will recommend areas to target
further research funding and to synthesize what we already
know works and doesn't work in educating children,
particularly those with learning and other cognitive
disabilities.
4. Early Intervention. Early identification
of First, Second, and Third Grade children showing
problems in learning can mean the difference between
academic and developmental success or a lifetime of
failure.
5. Funding. Opening the money spigot without
building a better system focused on results and
accountability will not solve the problems facing special
education today. We must develop fresh ideas about how we
can better spend Federal resources to improve special
education.
6. Teacher Quality and Student Accountability.
There are manifold issues in this area. We have a
shortage of welltrained special educators, we have a high
turnover rate of those that do enter the field, and we
need to close the gap between research and teacher
training to improve how well we serve children with
disabilities.
7. Regulations and Red Tape. The Commission
will study the impact of Federal and state laws and
regulations and how these requirements support or obstruct
the ability of schools to better serve children with
disabilities.
There is more than can be done to reduce the
amount of time special education teachers spend on
paperwork instead of teaching.
8. Models. We will look beyond Washington to
find alternatives to the standard way of doing things.
9. Federal versus Local Funding. The
Commission will review the experiences of state and local
governments in financing special education.
Our purpose this week in Houston is to listen
to the experts and talk with educators and the public
about what's effective in special education.
Over the next twoandahalf days, we will
begin to learn what's effective by:
1. Hearing from some of the nation's foremost
experts in reading. Several of these reading experts are
based in Texas, which is largely why we decided to hold a
hearing here.
2. We will examine research on early
intervention and identification of children who may need
special education services.
3. We will discuss alignment of special
education services to current state accountability
systems.
4. We will learn about the relationship
between student achievement and due process.
5. We will visit schools in the Houston
Independent School District.
As you can see, this is a resultsoriented
Commission that is truly concerned about ensuring that no
child is left behind. In order to do that, we need your
help. We need your suggestions. Tell us what works.
Show us the models.
Thank you for your interest in our work. We
appreciate everyone who has taken the time to attend our
hearing today.
We will now open the first hearing of the
President's Commission on Excellence in Special Education.
I'm going to first ask C. Todd Jones, our
executive secretary, to give us the revised schedule, and
then I'll introduce our first panel.
MR. JONES: If all of you could take a look
under Tab A, which is our agenda, and on page 2 is the
agenda for tomorrow. There's a slight revision to that
which I will explain.
We have reports on school visits which is set
to start at 1:30. The revised start time if 1:15. The
panel reviews will be at 2:00; the break will be at 2:50;
the panel reviews will return at 3:20; and we will adjourn
at 4:10.
You'll notice it says that under the panel
reviews Commissioners will discuss their views on the
reports with 30 minutes allotted for each, and we're going
to cut that back to 25.
The reason for that is that, for those of you
that are attending the rodeo, we are meeting the busses
promptly at five o'clock in front of the hotel. If you
miss the five o'clock bus, it's my understanding it's a
very, very long walk to the Astrodome. So I just want to
make that part of it clear.
(General laughter.)
MR. JONES: That's all for the revised
schedule. Governor, speakers.
MR BRANSTAD: We have two very distinguished
presenters. The first is Daniel J. Reschly, Ph.D. Dr.
Daniel Reschly is the Chair of the Department of Special
Education and a Professor of Education and Psychology at
Vanderbilt University's Peabody College.
From 1975 to 1998, he directed the Iowa State
University School of Psychology Program, which is in Ames,
Iowa, and that was during most of that time I was
governor. So he told me that he lived under my
administration for quite a while.
And during his distinguished career at Iowa
State, he achieved the rank of Distinguished Professor of
Psychology and Education.
Reschly earned graduate degrees at the
University of Iowa and Iowa State and the University of
Oregon and served as a school psychologist in Iowa,
Oregon, and Arizona.
He has published extensively on the topics of
special education system reform, overrepresentation of
minority children and youth, learning disability
classification procedures, and mild retardation.
Reschly served as the National Academy of
Sciences Panels on Standardsbased Reform and the
Education of Students with Disabilities, and is a member
of the Minority Overrepresentation in Special Education,
Chair of the Disability Determination in Mental
Retardation, and CoDirector of the National Research
Center on Learning Disabilities.
His awards include the NASP Lifetime
Achievement Award, three NASP Distinguished Service
Awards, the Stroud Award, appointment to Fellow of the
American Psychological Association and the American
Psychological Society, Charter Member of the Iowa Academy
of Education, and 1996 Outstanding Alumnus, College of
Education, University of Oregon.
Dr. Reschly lives in Nashville with his wife
and three children.
Our other distinguished presenter is Sharon
Vaughn, Ph.D.
Dr. Sharon Vaughn is the Mollie Villeret Davis
Professor in Learning Disabilities and the Director of the
Texas Center for Reading and Language Arts in the College
of Education at the University of Texas at Austin.
Dr. Vaughn published more than 120 articles in
refereed journals such as Exceptional Children, Teaching
Exceptional Children, and Journal of Learning Disabilities
and has written several books on instructional methods for
general and special education teachers.
Through her research, writing, and professional
activities, Vaughn maintains a commitment to improving
outcomes for students with special needs and their
families with emphasis on minority children and their
families.
For the past six years, she has coordinated a
largescale reading intervention research project in
Hileah, Florida that has served as a model for
implementing researchbased practices for the State of
Florida.
Vaughn is recognized for her ability to
translate research into practice and receives numerous
requests from higher education and school districts to
assist with the implementation of research practices.
She directs an evaluation project in
coordination with the States of Texas and Florida to
identify model school sites that are implementing
successful pilot projects and other programs for students
with disabilities.
Vaughn has directed several additional school
based research projects including a largescale
investigation of teachers' planning and instruction for
students with special needs in the general education
classroom.
She has been highly interested in the extent to
which instructional practices are maintained by targeted
teachers and sustained by the school.
Sustainability is a critical aspect of her last
four years of research and resulted in research on the
effectiveness of professional development practices.
I'll turn it over to Dr. Reschly first.
DR. RESCHLY: Thank you very much, Governor and
honorable Commissioners. It's my pleasure to appear
before you today representing the National Research
Council. Thank you for that very kind introduction.
And I think a much more appropriate
introduction would be, Here's Dan Reschly. He's the
author of a number of widely disregarded journal articles.
(General laughter.)
DR. RESCHLY: Today I'm representing a
committee much like the committee that many of you serve
on. It was a committee that had a great deal of
diversity. It was appointed subsequent to Congressional
legislation that charged the National Academy of Sciences
with investigating and issuing a report on minority
overrepresentation in special education.
Our charge was expanded then to include gifted
as well, but most of what I say today will apply merely to
special education, since that is the focus of our work.
The committee was a diverse group of
individuals who represented a variety of academic
disciplines, professional roles. There were a total of 15
persons on the commission.
We reached a unanimous set of recommendations,
that is, a set of recommendations that were unanimously
supported. And I will try to go over those
recommendations today, as well as provide a brief
rationale for each of the recommendations.
Sharon and I have divided our time by 25
minutes and 20 minutes. So if you want to pull a trap
door on me or remind me, I ought to be out of here by five
after 9:00, and I shall endeavor to do so.
Today the plan in briefing you is to first talk
about disproportionality facts and some data on
disproportionality; secondly to talk about biological and
social bases.
Third, and perhaps the strongest message from
this committee, is the importance of early prevention and
intervention; fourth, to talk about general education
roles and recommendations; fifth, teacher quality issues;
sixth, special education reform and recommendations; and
then, the last, research and data collection
recommendations.
Incidentally, these slides appear under Tab D
of your briefing or your agenda book, toward the end of
Tab D, I believe it is.
First some disproportionality facts and
figures. This was a great deal more difficult, that is,
to get accurate information on this, than it should have
been, to be perfectly blunt about it.
In the numerator for these figures we have all
children with disabilities age six to 21; in the
denominator we have the number of schoolaged children.
So these percentages are slightly elevated because the
numerator includes a broader age range than the
denominator, but it's only slightly elevated.
The question is, is there disproportionality?
Clear answer, yes, there is substantial