Bucks County Courier Times: Special Education in Bucks County
Morgaine Ford-Workman / Staff Graphic
Posted: Sunday, July 17, 2011 12:00 am | Updated: 6:47 am, Sun Jul 17, 2011.
By Dan Dunkin
Staff Writer | |
Like many school districts in these turbulent economic times, Bristol Township has dealt with serious budget challenges.
Despite those hurdles, its special education program remains an uplifting comeback story, maximizing resources and improving the learning environment for students with disabilities.
“There’s been a whole shift of attitude in special education over the last 10 years, particularly in this district,” says James McAnulty, Bristol Township’s supervisor of secondary special education.
The primary change has been in how Bristol Township and other local districts prioritize the practice of inclusion — including special education students in regular education classrooms as much as possible, with learning supports.
“Now,” says McAnulty, “there’s been an acceptance that all students first belong in their neighborhood school and in a regular education class, and we take it from there.”
“It’s really creating that sense of belonging for all kids,” says Diane Paul, Pennsbury’s director of special education. “This district embraces it.”
“It used to be that once you were in special ed, you were out,” says Damon Smith, Bristol’s director of special education and pupil services. “But there’s been a push, and it’s almost the opposite now.”
Special turnaround
Meeting the ever-growing demands of special education can be a challenge. The increasing numbers of students with Individualized Education Programs across the nation, partly due to the rise in autism, are juxtaposed with increasing costs and static or dwindling federal and state funding. Pennsylvania’s commitment toward special education has been frozen at $1 billion for each of the last three years.
Meanwhile, federal mandates for inclusion and intensified monitoring by the Pennsylvania Department of Education compel school districts to fit most IEP students into the regular classroom for the majority of each school day. This often requires sweeping staff development and alternative instructional models, such as co-teaching.
Students with more severe disabilities and those with behavior issues sometimes aren’t suited for the regular classroom. Districts that aren’t large enough to create their own classes for those students then must pay a far steeper price to send them to special schools or county intermediate units.
Six years ago, Bristol Township was not in compliance with state inclusion standards. The district ranked fifth-worst in Pennsylvania with 34 percent of its IEP students excluded from regular education and the general curriculum for more than 60 percent of the school day.
“That was not good,” McAnulty said. “We went through a whole series of strategies and procedures to change that.”
Stacy Gerlach joined the township’s school board in 2004 to bring more awareness to students with disabilities. Her son, Billy, who is multi-handicapped, represents the low-incidence percentage of disabled students. But his mother thought he should be included in some general education classes, and he was — in art, music and physical education.
“I think the inclusion part is really important,” Gerlach said. “Back when we started, that wasn’t a big thing.
“But it’s not for all kids; all kids cannot be included.”
Gerlach was speaking about the behavior perspective; in middle school, she said, Billy was disruptive in class.
“I said, ‘Pull him out,’ ” Gerlach said. “And that’s where some kids don’t fit in. I don’t want to disrupt other kids.”
Bristol Township made it work better for Billy and many others with varying degrees of IEPs. At Armstrong Middle School, a class was created for Billy and others with similar special needs. He attended Harry S. Truman High School, participated in field trips, went to football games and, his mother notes proudly, did a senior project.
“We worked as a team,” Gerlach said of the district’s special ed department. “It worked out wonderfully.”
“We started thinking, ‘If we can do it for a student with multiple disabilities, why can’t we do it for others?’ ” said Lou deFonteny, supervisor of elementary special education at Bristol Township. “We started to get a groundswell.”
Bristol Township, with a high percentage of special education students — 20 percent, compared to the state average of 15.2 — has made big strides in inclusion over the last five years. The district was recognized by the state for dramatic improvement in 2009, and this past school year shot up to 68.1 percent of its IEP students being included in regular education classes 80 percent or more of the day — seven points higher than the state average.
For 2009-10, its IEP students met state targets for graduation, and among IEP students in statewide assessments the district met Annual Yearly Progress goals for elementary through high school. Also, Bristol Township’s percentage of IEP students scoring proficient in state assessments for reading and math — 40.8 percent and 52.3, respectively — was higher than the state averages (35.3 and 45.7).
An interesting IDEA
The 1991 Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, an outgrowth of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act passed by Congress in 1975, requires that children with disabilities be educated in the “least restrictive environment appropriate” wherever possible, meaning inclusion.
IEPs, mandated by IDEA, are designed for a child whose disability is adversely affecting his or her educational progress. Many special education students are on normal academic pace in some subjects while requiring special help in others. The vast majority of special education/IEP students in Bucks County have specific learning disabilities rather than more severe disabilities such as autism, mental retardation or speech/hearing impairments. It is the former group that comprises most of inclusion.
McAnulty’s biggest concern when he arrived at Bristol Township seven years ago was the large group of students “between regular education and the life skills program.”
“Twenty years ago,” McAnulty said, “students with minor disabilities weren’t in general ed classes; they were in special ed. Now every student is treated like everyone else first, and then services are provided as needed.”
In 2004, Congress passed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act, which required every state to develop a State Performance Plan that included educating students in a least restrictive environment while monitoring student proficiency rates on statewide assessments. The 2005 settlement of a statewide class action lawsuit, Gaskin vs Pennsylvania Department of Education, committed the state to increased efforts in inclusion and in the monitoring of compliance. Those districts among the lowest-rated must provide corrective action plans.
“Probably in the last five years, in particular with the Gaskin settlement, it really has required all districts to try to maximize inclusive practices,” says Neshaminy Superintendent Louis Muenker. “With that comes a lot of challenges, with trying to develop IEPs that make sense for students; that you’re just not having inclusive practices to say you are.”
For the 2010-11 school year, Neshaminy’s 53.9 percent inclusion rate (IEP students in regular classrooms 80 percent or more of a school day) is about seven points below the state average of 61.0. Among the other districts interviewed for this story, Council Rock is at 65.0, Pennsbury 58.3 and Bristol Borough 50.
For 2009-10 — the most recent year available for comprehensive special education data from the state education department — all four districts, like Bristol Township, met AYP targets for grades three-12 IEP students on state assessments. Bristol Borough, however, did not reach SPP targets in graduation, and the district fell below the state rate for IEP students scoring proficient in reading and math state assessments.
“I think some of the movements in recent years have absolutely been in the right direction,” Muenker says. “Some are a little bit lofty. Unfortunately the state and federal government expect your special ed student to be on level with their grade-age peers, and that’s kind of counter-intuitive to the need for their extra support.”
Inclusion’s pros and cons
Advocates of inclusion say it benefits both special education and general education students. The former are surrounded by role models and develop relationships with non-disabled peers. Regular ed students learn to understand and accept people with disabilities.
Financially, more inclusion means school districts are saving some heavy expenses of sending a child to a special school for disabilities or a county IU.
Critics of inclusion say effectively delivering two or more instructional methods in the same classroom is difficult. Possible results: IEP students who need different instruction can fall further behind their peers, and the special needs of IEP students will impede the progress of regular ed children. The latter has been a common fear of parents.
Parents of special ed students sometimes don’t want schools to push their kids too much.
“There’s constantly pressure to move backwards — from principals, teachers and parents sometimes,” McAnulty says. “Some want to keep them in replacement programs.
“It’s understandable. We’re balancing it all the time.”
As Gerlach said, inclusion isn’t for everybody when behavior is a problem. IEP teams must go through a protocol to determine whether adjustments in the regular class will help the special ed student, or if a move to another room is better for everyone.
“I think behavior is one of the most challenging ones to deal with,” Paul says. “Because you don’t always pinpoint what the trigger is, to be able to prepare the environment, prepare the student.
“If it’s something we’re working on improving, the child still belongs in that environment. But we are sensitive to what is the impact on the other kids.”
“Behavior’s always a challenge,” Smith says. “When you exhaust all your resources, that’s when you typically look for an outside placement, a more supportive environment. This occurs all the time …. and my job is also to see if there are opportunities to bring these kids back.”
In inclusive settings, the co-teaching model — one instructor assisting IEP students in a class with the regular education teacher — is often employed by districts.
“Our (special ed) teachers became more consultative-type teachers in the regular class with the regular education teacher,” McAnulty said. “It’s very effective because what’s happening is all the kids are now getting the curriculum from highly qualified teachers at grade level. What’s happened is all the boats have risen with the tide.”
Pennsbury renewed its emphasis on inclusion by hiring inclusion specialist Lisa Oates, increasing training in special education instruction, and using an itinerant services support team.
“We have re-organized the delivery of our special education services they need in their home school,” says Paul. “We are engaged in a lot of professional development so that we can de-mystify special education.”
Cost
By federal mandate, the district where the special education child lives must pay for supports and services even when he or she has to go outside the district for them. While larger districts such as Bristol Township and Council Rock can create their own special classes, smaller ones like Bristol Borough often cannot, and the expenses can be enormous, eating up IDEA federal funds and state money. IUs can cost $35,000 and much higher, into six figures, per student per year.
At Bristol, approximately one in every five students has disabilities, and special education accounts for 20 percent of the budget. Business manager Joseph Roe explained that the state’s elimination of an excess cost reimbursement formula — giving the district back the difference between the cost of a special ed student and a regular ed student — has had a huge impact.
“It was costing them too much,” Roe said. “Special ed had had a higher impact since they did that, and it’s just gone downhill since then financially.”
One alternative: Bristol will sometimes partner tuition with districts that create special classes — Bristol Township and Pennsbury (both also have well-regarded life skills programs). Bristol has been able to start two autistic support classrooms.
“We’re constantly saying, can we bring kids back, make a class, save a hundred thousand dollars?” Smith says. “It just seems like there are more and more demands — testing, adhere to these timelines — but less and less money, with fewer resources. …. If a kid moves in and is going to cost $100,000 to educate, are we going to have to cut a teacher?”
Even at a large district like Neshaminy, which Muenker says relies heavily on IUs, the pinch is also felt. Muenker says educational costs per autistic child can run more than $40,000 a year.
“We don’t tend to get fairly compensated by the state or federal government to support the mandate that comes from them,” Muenker says, “so that’s been a level of frustration I probably share with a lot of my superintendent colleagues.”
Part of Bristol Township’s progress in special education was being able to bring students with severe disabilities, such as Billy Gerlach, back to its own schools. It now runs programs for autistic students at Clara Barton Elementary, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Middle School and Truman. Going forward, McAnulty says IDEA funds have been sufficient but the uncertainty of state assistance is a concern.
Council Rock also benefits from its size: Barely 1 percent of its special ed students go out of district. Goodnoe Elementary houses a class for autistic students.
The hit on tax dollars has been lessened, says Charles Lambert, director of pupil services at Council Rock, by the district’s pursuit of the ACCESS program. It allows Pennsylvania schools to receive federal Medicaid reimbursement for providing IEP health-related services to Medical Assistance-eligible children.
“One of the things with special education is that under almost all circumstances, money cannot be a reason why you don’t provide what is necessary with the IEP,” Lambert says.
Counters Smith from smaller Bristol Borough: “At some point I feel like something’s got to give. Somebody’s got to see that, wow, we keep doing more and more with less and less. It’s a true impact.”
