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The Senate Education Committee met to discuss its interim charge related to the effectiveness of public school programs serving special education students, including autistic students.
The Committee heard from a panel of experts about suggested solutions for problems occurring in the context of special education. For example, an attorney from a statewide advocacy organization for disabled students suggested that there needs to be incentives for schools to work collaboratively with parents, that the state should investigate allowing the use of “lay advocates” (non-attorneys) in due process hearings since many parents can’t afford to pay attorneys, and to investigate using IEP team “facilitators” who are trained in making IEP team meetings more effective and efficient.
An attorney for school districts testified in support of districts and regional education service centers using “ombudsmen” to address concerns brought by parents and educators in order to temper the potential for concerns to escalate into an adversarial situation. He also called for mandatory annual special education training for all educators, as well as for campus and district-level site-based decision-making committees to include special education personnel. He commented that incentives contained in federal law for districts to engage in Response to Intervention (RTI, an alternative approach for responding to students who are potentially eligible for special education services rather than referring the student for special education services) conflict with the legal model contained in the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) that requires districts to identify and serve special education students.
This testimony was followed by a discussion between Chair Shapiro and TEA staff about the current status of RTI in Texas. TEA staff informed the chair that the genesis of RTI was actually a tiered reading model developed by the University of Texas at Austin. It then evolved into an instructional model to be used in regular education to ensure that only students who are truly in need of special education services are referred for such, as a way to address what was seen as an overidentification of students with learning disabilities.
Chair Shapiro asked how prevalent the use of this model is by Texas schools. TEA staff responded that federal law does not mandate the use of RTI, and that based on public input TEA received when revising state special education rules, the state would keep RTI optional until the state has “scaled up” in order to implement RTI successfully. TEA staff further explained that the state has an education/training responsibility to regular education that the state hasn’t met yet. The Chair asked TEA to provide a timeline for full implementation of RTI as well as advice regarding whether to make RTI mandatory for all Texas schools posthaste, as she said time was of the essence. (For more information on the topic of RTI, see the TCTA website.)
The committee also considered the use of a voucher for special education students, as is done in Florida under the name “McKay Scholarships,” and the overrepresentation of special education students both in DAEPs and as dropouts. A parent of a McKay scholarship recipient said that she felt the scholarship gave her son an opportunity to excel since he was unable to attend public schools. Private schools that receive scholarship funds do not have to follow the IDEA requirements that traditional public schools are required to meet.
The Senate Education Committee is expected to meet again on September 15.
Web posted: 08/28/08
