Special Education

Special Education, specially designed instruction to meet the unique needs and abilities of disabled or gifted children. Disabled children have conditions that adversely affect their progress in conventional education programs. Gifted children, who demonstrate high capacity in intellectual, creative, or artistic areas, may also fare poorly in regular education programs. Special education services can help both disabled and gifted children make progress in education programs. Most children served by special education programs are between the ages of 6 and 17.

In the United States, federal law requires states to identify and serve all children with disabilities. Public education and health officials in the United States identified approximately 5.4 million infants, toddlers, children, and youth as disabled in 1994. That same year, the U.S. Department of Education reported that 12.2 percent of all children below the age of 21 received some form of special education. The most frequently reported disabilities are speech or language impairments; mental retardation and other developmental disorders; serious emotional disturbance; and specific learning disorders, such as memory disorders. Other disabilities include hearing, visual, or orthopedic impairments; autism; and traumatic brain injury. An increasing number of children in the United States are identified as having attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and receive special education services.

Many schools in the United States provide special education services for gifted children, although federal law does not mandate these services. Gifted children demonstrate exceptionally high abilities in intellectual, creative, academic, leadership, or artistic areas. Estimates of the gifted population in the United States range from 3 to 15 percent of all school children.

There have always been disabled and gifted children. However, special education programs are relatively new. Historically, people with disabilities were often placed in hospitals, asylums, or other institutions that provided little, if any, education. French physician and educator Jean Marc Gaspard Itard was one of the earliest teachers to argue that special teaching methods could be effective in educating disabled children. In 1801 Itard discovered a young boy roaming wild in the woods of France. Between 1801 and 1805 Itard used systematic techniques to teach the boy, named Victor, how to communicate with others and how to perform daily living skills, such as dressing himself. In 1848 French psychologist Edouard Séguin, who had studied with Itard, immigrated to the United States and developed several influential guidelines for educating children with special needs. Séguin’s education programs stressed the importance of developing independence and self-reliance in disabled students by presenting them with a combination of physical and intellectual tasks.

During the 18th and 19th centuries in the United States, educators opened a variety of special schools for disabled students. In 1816 American minister and educator Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet established the first public school for deaf students in the United States. The first school for blind students in the United States was founded in 1829 in Boston by American physician John Dix Fisher. The school is known today as Perkins School for the Blind and is located in Watertown, Massachusetts. Special education classes within regular school programs began at the beginning of the 20th century. Elizabeth Farrell, a teacher in one of these early classes in New York City, founded the Council for Exceptional Children in 1918. This organization remains the primary professional group for teachers and administrators in the field of special education.

Special education in the United States has been most influenced by parent and professional advocacy groups, federal laws, national trends in conventional education, and the civil rights movement (see Civil Rights Movement in the United States). Despite mandatory school attendance laws for all children, many U.S. schools excluded children with disabilities as recently as the 1960s. Since then, societal attitudes have changed, and federal laws now require schools to give children with disabilities full access to education programs.

Facilities

Special education services are delivered in many different settings and facilities depending on the services to be provided, the age of the child, and the need for other related services. School districts must provide a full range of settings to meet individual needs of children with disabilities, but U.S. law requires that a child with a disability must be educated in the “least restrictive” setting. For example, children with mild disabilities may be educated in regular classrooms with or without teachers trained in special education. Some students with more severe disabilities require more restrictive settings, such as separate schools, hospitals, or modified facilities within their own homes.

In conventional classrooms, teachers trained in special education collaborate with other teachers to plan and carry out instruction for students with special needs. Children with severe health or behavioral problems may receive education services in separate facilities or hospitals from many different teachers and specialists. A child with severe behavior problems, for example, may receive a combination of education, mental health, and social services. Infants and toddlers with disabilities often receive assistance in the home or in community settings, such as a school or hospital. Such assistance, known as early intervention services, focuses on treating existing disabilities or preventing their occurrence. As older children with disabilities prepare for adult life, planning increasingly centers on functional skills within community, work, and living environments; continuing education and training; and identification of support services, as needed, in the community.

INSTRUCTIONAL SERVICES

Special education services make use of an extraordinary array of instructional methods and settings that make it possible for all students to learn. Special educators plan and evaluate instruction in an individualized manner to accommodate each child’s unique strengths and weaknesses. In planning instruction, teachers often use methods known as ecological assessments to consider environmental factors that influence learning, such as school, home, and community environments. Many students with disabilities receive instruction in traditional subjects, such as reading, writing, language, and math. To evaluate a student’s progress, teachers often rely on a method known as curriculum based assessment, which monitors progress within the student’s own curriculum rather than against the educational programs for other students.

Specific fields of special education address the needs of students with specific disabilities. These disabilities include (1) behavior disorders, (2) learning disorders, (3) mental retardation, (4) physical disabilities, (5) vision impairments, and (6) hearing problems. Special education also includes the field of education for gifted students. 

• For Students with Behavior Disorders

Instructors teach social skills to help all students demonstrate the behavior needed to develop and maintain satisfactory relationships with peers and others. When students with disabilities have problems with behavior, special educators often use principles of instruction known as applied behavior analysis, which analyzes and alters the sources or consequences of problem behavior. Behavior analysis consists of defining and analyzing the specific task to be learned, direct and frequent measurement of student performance, and providing systematic feedback to the student. Behavior modification techniques help students to deal with anger and other emotions, to solve problems better, and to manage their own behavior. See also Education of Students with Behavior Disorders. 

• For Students with Learning Disorder

Several different instructional techniques are used for students who have problems learning, remembering, and communicating information. Among these techniques is Direct Instruction, a method based on a systematic curriculum design and highly structured, fast-paced lessons in which students participate actively and often. Another method is known as learning strategies instruction, which is designed to teach a student specific learning skills, such as strategies to enhance memorization or problem-solving skills. Teachers may also help students to work around individual learning disorders. For example, teachers may allow a student with memory problems to use a tape recorder to dictate notes and record class lectures. See also Education of Students with Learning Disorders.

•  For Students with Mental Retardation

Mental retardation is a form of developmental disability characterized primarily by an intelligence quotient (IQ) that is significantly below average. Other developmental disabilities include cerebral palsy, dyslexia, and certain learning disorders. An education program for a student with mental retardation varies depending on the student’s level of disability. Instruction may center on developing communication, socialization, or daily living skills. Many students with retardation receive services in regular classes in their local schools. Others with more profound levels of retardation may attend classes in specialized schools or hospital facilities designed for students with special needs

For Students with Physical disability

Students with physical disabilities often benefit from the use of technology designed to increase their capability to participate in classroom activities. Technological devices used by these students may be relatively simple, such as leg braces for students with orthopedic problems, or they may be as complex as a computer that synthesizes speech patterns for children whose disability causes speech disorders (see Speech Synthesis). Some of these technological devices are very expensive and strain the budgets of many school districts. Educators and parents work closely to determine the best use of school resources for classroom modifications and acquisitions of technology for all children with special needs.

For Students with Vision Impairments

Many children who have low vision or are blind (see Blindness) learn to read and write by using the Braille system of raised dots that can be read by touch rather than sight. They may also use a special laptop computer that allows them to take notes in Braille and print in Braille or English. Sophisticated electronic devices can also convert print into a form that is readable by blind or visually impaired students. Some computers can scan printed text for a blind student and read it aloud by means of a synthetic voice. Most children with visual impairments have some functional vision and can often read by using large-print materials.

•  For Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students

Education of students who are hard of hearing or deaf (see Deafness) may involve the use of powerful amplification devices, such as hearing aids, or it may use captions (printed words that appear on a television screen or computer monitor). Many deaf or hard of hearing students learn sign language, an organized system of gestures for communication. Others learn to speechread (lipread), a method of interpreting speech by “reading” the patterns of a person’s mouth as he or she speaks. Some deaf students receive cochlear implants, which are receivers surgically implanted behind the ear and connected to electrodes placed in the cochlea of the inner ear, enabling individuals to hear sounds to a varying degree

For Gifted Children

Gifted children are often moved through the regular school curriculum at a faster pace than their peers. Some children with exceptionally high ability in a particular subject area may be allowed to reduce the time they spend in their other subjects to permit more time to focus on challenging content in their specialty. A high school student who is particularly gifted in math, for example, may attend advanced math classes at a local college rather than music classes at the high school. Some gifted students may also skip grades or they may enter kindergarten, high school, or college at an early age

The prospects for students with disabilities have never been brighter. Educators and medical experts know much more than ever before about the prevention of many disabilities, particularly those caused by environmental or health hazards. The knowledge available to provide effective special education services also continues to grow. Educators have also improved special education services for gifted students. Children with exceptionally high academic abilities may now participate in increasing numbers of special education programs designed specifically to meet their needs.

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