Key points:

• Real-time captioning is a critical accommodation for students
• Leveraging student data to improve IEPs
• Transitioning to a workload approach in K-12 special education
• For more news on accessibility, visit eSN’s Innovative Teaching page

In recent years, the education sector has rapidly adopted captioning, driven not only by its positive impact on comprehension and inclusive learning but also by the necessity of adhering to accessibility standards and providing accommodations for diverse learning styles.

While K-12 schools and higher-ed institutions have spent considerable effort adhering to accessibility standards (and should be applauded for that effort), one in four lawsuits in education center around accessibility. Thus, the focus on captioning–a requirement in K-12 and higher education–has intensified.

As technology advances, we have seen other tools arise, including summarized transcription. Given the choice between summarized transcription and real-time captioning, it’s crucial to understand which is right for your organization.

Summarized transcription: What and why

Summarized transcription, a form of “speech-to-text services,” provides “meaning-for-meaning” transcriptions by summarizing the essence of a discussion or other spoken content. This service aims to convey a speaker’s intended meaning in as few words as possible so that a reader can quickly understand the information and participate in the discussion. Because it’s meant for quick comprehension, it is measured in terms of how closely the content captures the speaker’s intended meaning but doesn’t take into account the precise words.

Summarized transcript transcribers are often trained in text-condensing strategies. They offer real-time summarized transcripts for lectures, meetings, and live events, either remotely or in the classroom.

Real-time captioning: When and why

Real-time captioning is performed by professionally trained captioners, automated speech recognition (ASR), or a combination of the two. Unlike summarized transcription, real-time captioning delivers verbatim, “word-for-word” transcriptions in real-time. Since word-for-word transcription aims to capture every word spoken in a discussion, the accuracy of real-time captions is meticulously measured in terms of word error rates and formatted error rates. Word error rate represents the percentage of incorrect words, while formatted error rate considers errors in punctuation, grammar, speaker identification, non-speech elements, capitalization, and other notations.

While there is currently no definitive legal requirement for live captioning accuracy rates, the industry standard for closed captioning on recorded content is 99 percent, providing some context as to where live accuracy rates should be.

Real-time captions can be delivered to students in several ways. If the student is in person, they can receive captions on a second screen, such as a tablet or laptop. Alternatively, real-time captions can be delivered remotely through solutions like Communication Access Realtime Translation, or CART, catering to students’ preferences.

Despite being more expensive due to the intensive training of stenographers and voice writers, real-time captioning is often necessary as an accommodation for students who are d/Deaf or Hard of Hearing, ensuring an equal experience as required under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

What to select

The decision to use a real-time captioning service or a summarized transcription service ultimately depends on a student’s needs and preferences, as these two tools, while serving similar purposes, have distinct applications.

Meaning-for-meaning transcription caters to consumers who prioritize the overall meaning of what is spoken over the verbatim details. For students who want to understand the overall gist of a discussion rather than every single word, summarized transcription can be a great option – an academic SparkNotes, if you will!

Hard-of-hearing students, who can hear some or most spoken content but may need reinforcement from written text, might prefer using meaning-for-meaning transcription. Conversely, d/Deaf students might opt for real-time captioning as a necessary accommodation.

It’s important to remember that the benefits of real-time captioning or transcription extend beyond those who are d/Deaf or hard of hearing. Students with Attention Deficit Disorder, for instance, often find that captioning provides the reinforcement they need to stay focused during and after class.

Simply put: Real-time captioning is an essential accommodation, while summarized transcription serves as a valuable study tool that cannot replace captions as an accommodation.

The value of both for fully inclusive learning environments

While summarized transcription serves as a valuable study resource, it falls short of providing the “equal experience” mandated by the ADA. The true strength lies in strategically integrating tools like real-time captioning and summarized transcription. This not only aligns with Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles but also showcases a commitment to inclusive education.

By incorporating real-time captioning, educational institutions demonstrate a dedication to ensuring that students with hearing impairments can fully engage with live educational content. Simultaneously, the use of summarized transcription aids in streamlining access to essential course material, supporting effective studying and knowledge retention.

Both of these technologies contribute to the creation of a more inclusive and supportive learning environment. Embracing these technologies demonstrates a commitment to addressing diverse learning needs and ensuring that all students have the opportunity to excel academically. As educational practices continue to evolve, the integration of these tools will play a crucial role in promoting equal access to educational content and enhancing the overall learning experience for students.

Key points:

• A single web-based platform lets districts streamline student data collection
• See article: 3 ways to improve access to speech-language therapy
• See article: Innovative ideas for school libraries
• For more news on IEPs, visit eSN’s Innovative Teaching page

Educators generate and collect student Individualized Education Program (IEP) data daily. Because of the number of stakeholders involved in the IEP development and implementation, student data sets may exist in case files, spreadsheets or several software programs.

Some school leaders are fortunate enough to house their data in systems where IEP information can be ingested, disaggregated, and managed in a way that paints a clear picture. But more often than not, leaders need more time, better processes, and the appropriate tool to manage data in a way that reveals critical insights.

Technology has the power to bring together years of student IEP-related data, allowing educators to understand better both how to serve individual students and where their programs are making a difference.

The limits of manual IEP interpretation

When you think about the steps involved in creating and implementing an IEP, the process requires a fair amount of human intervention and interpretation. Educators set goals with students and families annually and then collect information supporting those goals in different ways throughout the year. Ideally, goals and plans vary from year to year.

All of this personalization and fine-tuning creates a challenge for reviewers in their determination of whether or not students are demonstrating measurable progress in a given area. Processes for understanding the educational benefit of a particular IEP vary widely, and in many cases include educators printing out IEPs, collecting service records, achievement and behavioral data, and lining them up side-by-side to evaluate whether students made meaningful gains towards their goals. This and processes like it are time-consuming and leave too much room for variability, oversight, and error.

By moving spreadsheets, forms, and other information to one web-based platform, districts can significantly streamline data collection and monitor multiple data types over several years. Educators can better evaluate student IEPs within a consistent framework, allowing for a structured review and better inter-rater reliability. District leaders can determine whether the services students receive match their needs. By taking a data-driven approach to individual IEP development and review, leaders can, with suitable systems, aggregate IEP data to look at ways they can better serve students with disabilities as a whole.

Benefit from a bird’s eye view

Data reveals patterns that help educators adjust individual student goals and services and can pave a pathway to district program improvement. Stepwell for Districts, for example, allows educators to use aggregate district IEP-related data to help answer compliance and procedural questions at a high level, such as:

• How are we doing on IDEA indicators? Did we meet our programmatic goals this year? How do we compare to last year?
• How successful was our district in completing our IEPs on time? Are there any patterns?
• Can we address the root causes of issues so they don’t happen again?
• What other trends are we seeing that we can investigate to better prepare for the future?

As powerful as answering those questions can be for making systemic changes, there is a second path a district can follow: by drawing upon a data sample that spans three years, educators can evaluate the quality, completeness, and consistency of their IEP practices both at the student and aggregate levels.

Beyond providing a view of special education services from a compliance and project management perspective, beginning in early 2024,  the right platform will show the educational benefit to students provided by participating in a program. These platforms can include a heat map that helps leaders look at patterns that may emerge across the district, measuring how well the district performed relative to:

• Areas of assessment
• Present levels
• Areas of need
• Goals
• Services
• Progress

A heat map analysis quickly shows leaders where they’re succeeding and falling short. They can see if they’re matching services to students’ needs or making progress from year to year in a specific school, grade or within a particular student group. District leaders can adjust programs and reallocate their budgets using data-driven information to address the areas that require the most attention.

Districts can’t blaze a path forward if their educators are engrossed in manual processes that fail to show the evolution of their programs over time. By investing in technology locally, district leaders can support their states’ IDEA process and empower their special education leadership to get the information needed to inform student and programmatic improvements. Educators can then shift their focus from compliance and record keeping to improving student outcomes.

Key points:

• Transitioning to a workload approach offers room for more effective and personalized support
• See article: Is the ‘Growing Your Own’ pipeline working for special ed teachers?
• See article: 3 ways telepractice helps combat burnout in special education
• Discover innovative ideas in teaching and learning

A recent 2022 Schools Survey conducted by American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) revealed that 78 percent of clinical service providers rely on the caseload approach to determine the number of students they served. Traditionally, this caseload approach has revolved around the number of students with Individualized Education Plans (IEPs), Individualized Family Service Plans (IFSPs), Multi-Tiered System of Support/Response to Intervention (MTSS/RTI) and 504 plans.

Special education providers continue to use the caseload approach to guide them in counting the number of students they are expected to provide services to. School district administrators typically use these numbers to determine how they will distribute staff across schools to meet service delivery needs.

However, by using this method, critical aspects are often overlooked and unaccounted for. This includes planning and paperwork demands related to indirect services with students, the long list of tasks that are involved in case management, meeting compliance standards, and collaborations with peers. Most importantly, the crucial role that a service provider plays in advocating for students in special education programs and ensuring they can advocate for themselves doesn’t fit into a “number” that can be counted on a caseload. This oversight can have a significant impact on both special education service providers and students.

Staff impacts

The caseload approach often imposes a significant burden on special education providers, leading to potential burnout. The number of students on a caseload doesn’t account for the unique needs and demands that each individual special education student brings with them. While the provider juggles the existing assessment and intervention caseload responsibilities, additional students are added to their programs. This results in swells that are not accounted for when the caseload was initially distributed, resulting in additional unpaid workload demands and considerable stress which contributes to burnout. It’s worth noting that a single annual review meeting for a special education student can generate 25-35 pages of paperwork. Providers are required to address the varied individual needs of each of the students on their caseload and all too often, planning time is limited.

It’s important to consider that not all caseloads are equal. For example, a speech and language pathologist (SLP) may appear to have a manageable caseload of 50 students. However, when you factor in that these 50 students are on three different campuses and 23 are in specialized classes and they require communication boards and devices, the task demands begin to compound. When 75 percent of the students on this caseload have sessions twice a week, the SLP needs to carve out travel time, in addition to planning and creating individualized materials and meeting the administrative demands associated with managing a caseload. The weekly stretching and pulling on a provider’s schedule and the constant attempts to squeeze in more tasks, can strain a provider’s energy, leaving them with less time for meaningful student interactions and tailored interventions.

Student impacts

The caseload approach often raises concerns about its impact on student achievement, especially when caseloads become excessively large due to the absence of caseload caps in many states. This leads to providers having to create large groups, to find a way to provide their service delivery.  However, these larger groups can lead to less individualized support and diminished student attention. It can also make it challenging for students with more severe needs and formidable goals.   

Amid these challenges, U.S. schools face an ongoing shortage of special education professionals, with a consistent 25 percent turnover rate over the past two decades. With consideration to the demands placed on these professionals and the implications for school staff and students, we should explore an alternative paradigm: the workload approach, an existing yet underutilized model.

Benefits of a workload approach

The workload approach focuses on student needs, prioritizing the time required for special education providers to effectively address and meet those needs. This holistic approach considers all the essential tasks and supports required for students to achieve their goals while managing provider responsibilities.

Shifting from a caseload to a workload approach can result in enhanced student outcomes as they benefit from more personalized attention, support, and intervention when necessary. In fact, alongside the available research demonstrating enhanced learning outcomes and reduced referrals, leading organizations including ASHA, The American Occupational Therapy Association, and American Physical Therapy Association recognize that implementing a workload approach can enhance service delivery effectiveness and student outcomes.

Implementing the workload approach not only unlocks valuable time for special education providers but also redefines how their contributions are valued. While the caseload model often focuses solely on direct student-facing time, the reality is that providers spend hours on critical tasks such as billing, report writing, parent communication, and creating communication tools—all of which directly benefit students. Recognizing these tasks as vital components of student support empowers special education providers. With more time dedicated to students and acknowledgment of their comprehensive role, job satisfaction increases, reducing the risk of burnout and improving staff retention.

Steps to transition

1. Reflect on current policies: What policies are in place that may prevent transitioning to a workload approach? What formulas are being used to determine the workload on a campus? These policies were likely established years ago and require adaptation to meet the evolving needs of today’s students who require special services. Preventive practices such as response to intervention are typically sacrificed to meet high caseload demands. Engage your experienced staff by asking, “What would happen if we reduced your caseload by 10 students? What would you be able to accomplish?”

2. Evaluate the staffing landscape: Assess how to address staffing needs to ensure all students receive necessary services. In a recent report by the National Center for Education Statistics, it was found that among the 15 percent of students receiving special education services, the largest proportions have specific learning disabilities (32 percent) and speech or language impairments (19 percent). As the demand for special education services grows, more school districts are adopting teleservices to meet staffing shortages and ensure students receive the services they need. This proactive approach not only enhances and expands service coverage but also allows the on-campus providers to distribute the workload as students are added to programs.  

3. Create an implementation strategy: Develop a comprehensive plan outlining clear steps, timelines, and responsibilities to ensure a smooth transition. Define a strong leadership team to guide staff through the change. This strategic approach not only supports the retention of experienced staff but also plays a crucial role in reducing turnover rates. By providing a roadmap and fostering a culture of adaptability, you can effectively implement the workload approach and ensure its long-term success.

Transitioning to a workload approach is not without its own set of hurdles, as it is a shift in how we think about the direct and indirect tasks that are involved in supporting special education students. While a caseload approach is an easy way to divvy out students to staff, it does not account for the necessary tasks that have to happen when students are not in the therapy room.  A workload approach validates these tasks and allows professionals to allocate time to complete these during the workday.    

Transitioning to a workload approach offers room for more effective and personalized support, ultimately leading to improved student outcomes. The long-term benefits for both students and professionals become evident, with students receiving more attentive and meaningful services and providers channeling their resources and time toward their students’ growth and success.

Key points:

• Special education students deserve the same opportunities as their general education peers, including the individualized support their path may require
• See article: 3 simple strategies to supercharge student growth
• See article: Innovative ideas for school libraries
• For more news on special education, visit eSN’s Innovative Teaching page

There are more than 140,000 special education (SPED) students in the state of Washington. Often, these students don’t have access to the same level of resources that are available to general education students. While we have made great strides in how we support students receiving special education services, there are still equity gaps that exist in areas like college and career planning. 

Special education students can be perceived as being unable to succeed in general and advanced level high school classes, engage in challenging job training, or succeed in postsecondary education. Often, these low expectations are fostered by previous educational experiences that teachers, school counselors, and parents had during their own K-12 education. Special education students should have their ambitions, interests, and talents acknowledged and encouraged, while also taking into consideration the learning supports needed for them to succeed. 

Regardless of ability, all students are entitled to access the resources that help them develop a successful and fulfilling post-secondary plan. 

Here are three ways to help special education students engage in the college and career planning process: 

Identify goals

Establishing goals is a critical first step for all students in the post-secondary planning process, as this provides a clear vision of what they want to achieve, and begins to create a road map of how to get there. 

School staff and families should work together to help special education students set goals that reflect and embrace the realities of their academic challenges without lowering expectations that could limit their options. These goals should be achievable, ambitious, and most importantly, personalized to include the student’s capabilities, strengths, and aspirations, while pushing them to maximize achievement based on their strengths.

Coursework can offer valuable insights, as well as reviewing what goals students have established for themselves in high school, to help in developing a clear and complete inventory of their skills. This will enable the career and college readiness team to have a solid understanding of what tools and support these students need to succeed.  

It’s important to keep conversations surrounding goal setting positive and focused on strengths, especially for students, staff, and families, who may struggle to see the possibilities for their future. 

Provide personalized experiences and instruction 

As with all students, the skills for college and career readiness can be developed in a variety of environments, with the support of both school staff and the larger community.

Creative opportunities for skill building and workforce training can be found within many schools. For instance, in our school district, we have special education students that work as teacher’s assistants delivering mail to offices and classrooms. Additionally, both hard and soft skills are  learned and cultivated outside the classroom in experiential settings, such as: community service projects, extracurricular activities, job shadowing, career mentorship, informational interviews, internships, practicums, and afterschool programs. 

Evaluate what skills and talents your special education students have, and create multiple opportunities both in and out of the classroom, to help students build upon them and prepare them for post-secondary life. 

Group involvement 

Special education students are often working with many different professionals within the school system, so it’s important that everyone involved has a shared understanding of their interests, strengths, and future goals to help them succeed.

Successful collaboration can help facilitate positive and realistic conversations among the entire team, ensuring all stakeholders are working toward supporting the student in reaching their post-secondary goals. College and career readiness software is a valuable tool that keeps everyone on the same page, allowing multiple individuals to easily track and monitor student progress. For Special Education students, the transition from high school to college or career can be a major step, so parent or guardian involvement is especially critical as they continue to offer support and guidance after graduation. 

Everyone who is a part of the student’s team–administrators, teachers, counselors, paraeducators, and parents–needs to embrace a culture and belief system that Special Education students are capable of high-level work, can succeed in postsecondary education, and can embark upon meaningful careers. Special education students deserve the same opportunities as their general education peers, including the individualized support that their path may require along the way. 

Key points:

• A new grant will fund research around increasing the academic engagement of students with special needs
• Teachers will benefit from insights into how to best support students with unique needs who also wish to be independent
• See related article: What matters most for our special education teachers?

When Sara Estrapala started her career as a high school paraeducator supporting students with disabilities such as autism, Down syndrome, learning disorders and challenging behaviors, she quickly recognized a challenge–her teenage students desire to make their own decisions and their teachers’ struggle to keep them engaged and following directions.

Now an assistant research professor in the University of Missouri College of Education and Human Development, Estrapala is leading a four-year, $519,939 early career development and mentoring grant aimed at increasing academic engagement and decreasing disruptive behavior by empowering select students to self-regulate their own behavior.

“The interventions that teachers provide to support high school students might not be sufficient for their needs, because students want an opportunity to make their own decisions and have a say in anything that they decide to do,” Estrapala said. “Ultimately, we want the students to have the skills they need to increase academic engagement and decrease their disruptive behaviors so that they can access the school curriculum.” 

To test the intervention, approximately 50 public high school students from Jefferson City, Hallsville and Fulton will participate. The students will first set goals on how they want to improve, whether that is paying closer attention to the teacher or following directions better. Then, they will self-monitor and self-evaluate their goal progress using a self-monitoring application called I-Connect.

After downloading I-Connect, the students will receive periodic alerts with prompts to determine whether they are using goal-oriented behaviors, such as paying attention or participating in classwork. Additionally, the app will graph students’ progress, which the students, teachers, and support staff can analyze to track improvements.

Estrapala will be mentored by Erica Lembke, a professor of special education at MU, and by Howard Wills, a professor at the University of Kansas.

“We need to leverage that developmental need for students to make independent decisions and have a say in what they want to do, and I want to combine that with some evidence-based practices that we already know work, such as goal-setting, self-monitoring and self-evaluation,” Estrapala said.

“Adults often feel like they know what is best for the students, but going forward, let’s ask the students themselves what their goals are and then have them go through a process of learning about their own behavior and how to change it in a systematic way that can be helpful in the classroom.” 

Funding was provided by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences. 

Related:
How we built a whole-child, wraparound approach to special education
Creating support ecosystems for neurodivergent learners

Schools today are facing a harsh reality: there is a chronic shortage of qualified speech-language pathologists (SLPs). As an SLP and clinical director who has worked with school districts across the country, I’ve watched this problem grow over the years. This, compounded with large amounts of paperwork and high caseloads, makes it difficult for SLPs to manage their workload, contributing to many students not getting the services they need.

Despite long-term efforts made by school administrators to help students and SLPs surmount service barriers, it’s clear that in-school speech-language therapy initiatives could still use a boost.

Here are three things administrators can do to improve student access to speech-language therapy.

Support ongoing SLP training

While the scope of practice for school-based SLPs is technically quite broad, SLPs may be assigned students who require highly-specialized therapeutic approaches. However, districts often don’t have the bandwidth or budget for the additional training required.

For instance, based on a 2021 ASHA report, out of 193,199 SLP members, only 8.2 percent self-identified as multilingual. Of those, 42 percent, or 6,653, reported working in school-based settings. Although this may appear to be a large number, school districts continually identify bilingual speech-language services as a chronic shortage. Furthermore, if a school district does not have access to a bilingual or multilingual SLP, or to an SLP trained to evaluate and provide treatment for culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) populations, these children can potentially be misidentified for speech-language services.

Subsequently, we’ve seen CLD students not receive speech-language interventions at all, or the interventions were not appropriately individualized or as effective. The good news is strategic funding and training opportunities can help onsite SLPs better support CLD populations, as well as other students with varying disabilities and goal areas. And, SLPs are often the best source for ideas about how to best direct training funds to support the varying speech-language needs of students.

Consider remote evaluations and teletherapy services

After 30-plus years of shortages, educators are painfully aware that more SLPs are needed to meet the growing demand for school-based speech-language services. That’s where teletherapy comes in.

Teletherapy programs based in clinical best practices:

• Allow school district leaders to mitigate the shortage
• Meet legal requirements
• Expand the pool of qualified SLPs to whom students have access
• Help on-site SLPs achieve more manageable workloads

Implement a Workload-Based Staffing Model

In 2014, ASHA, the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA), and the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) released a position paper advocating for a workload-based approach to service provider staffing, as opposed to a traditional caseload-based method. However, only 12 percent of school-based SLPs in ASHA’s most recent survey report using this method.

A workload-based analysis incorporates student and setting factors, as well as the full scope of responsibilities for SLPs. The result supports clinical best practices, higher quality services for students, and a greater likelihood of SLP job satisfaction and retention. However, while SLPs can advocate for this model, it is up to district leaders to ensure it’s implemented.

While it can be challenging for education leaders to remove student learning barriers, those who take a multi-pronged approach can make progress. For students in need of speech-language therapy, and for the SLPs who provide it, accessibility is key: access to specialized training, access to supplemental SLPs through remote services, and access to a workload-based staffing model can make a difference.

Related:
Virtual schools can serve students with special needs—and do it well

Untreated hearing loss can have lasting effects on students’ academic achievement, social relationships, and self-esteem. The Hearing Loss Association of America (HLAA) reports that even mild hearing loss can cause a child to miss as much as 50 percent of classroom discussion. Without appropriate management and support, children with mild to moderate hearing loss achieve one to four grade levels lower, on average, than students with typical hearing, according to American Speech Language Hearing Association.

The CDC reports that nearly 15 percent of children ages 6 to 19 have low- or high-frequency hearing loss of at least 16-decibel hearing level in one or both ears. Noise-induced hearing loss also is on the rise among young people. This is largely attributed to listening to music through earbuds at high volume. And hearing loss isn’t just affecting students. Nearly 48 million American adults have hearing loss. Assistive listening technology can help everyone in school environments, with and without hearing loss, hear more clearly.

An assistive listening system (ALS) is a wireless system with a transmitter and one or more receivers that send audio – from a teacher’s microphone, TV, or other sound sources – directly to headphones, hearing aids, or cochlear implants without amplifying ambient noise. Assistive listening systems provide a vastly improved experience for those with hearing loss.

Assistive listening systems can also help solve frustrating but common sound issues caused by distance, ambient noise, or poor room acoustics, which can challenge comprehension–even for those without hearing loss.  

The relatively low cost of adding this technology makes it easy to provide a reliable, high-quality assistive listening system. ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliance requires a minimum quantity of assistive listening equipment based on seating capacity, so a classroom with a seating capacity of 50 or less can provide a fully compliant, top-tier assistive listening system for under $1,000. Even a school with a 500-seat space, such as an auditorium, can purchase an assistive listening system for under $3,700.

Securing Funding for an Assistive Listening System

Below is a short primer on how nonprofits, including schools, might find funding for an assistive listening system.

Banks

The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) encourages banks to make services and loans available to their local communities. In this spirit, many banks also form a special department to respond to this requirement. The CRA Officer of the bank often handles the community giving program, whether a nonprofit asks for sponsorship or a grant.

Professional Associations
Regardless of an organization’s mission, there is almost always a national and local professional association affiliated with what the nonprofit does. If their goals are similar, those associations have a vested interest in each others success. 

Many professional associations give small grants to their constituent organizations, while others only fundraise for themselves and use the funds for their programs. If organizations have similar missions, it’s worth looking over their website to see whom they are partnering with to identify potential funders.

Grassroots Fundraising

Smaller nonprofit organizations may find that local, grassroots fundraising is the best approach. Establish a special fundraising project or campaign, such as “School Theater 2024 Listening Upgrade,” and briefly explain the project and dollar goal. Enlist the help of donors, volunteers, and friends.  

Create a membership program or direct mail letter. Appeal to local businesses for sponsorship. Add a donation page to your website or consider creating a crowdfunding campaign. 

Track your campaign’s success, keep donors apprised of your progress, and endeavor to turn those special project contributors into an ongoing donor base. 

Targeted Fundraising

It is common for many nonprofits to maintain a list of potential funders from whom to request funds. This target list may include individuals, businesses, or local civic services organizations such as the Kiwanis, Rotary, or Lions Clubs. Soliciting specific funding sources requires a deliberate approach. Request an in-person meeting and be prepared with a concise proposal that includes an explanation of the particular need, the benefits of the solution, and the cost.

The strength of your relationship with a business or funder is directly proportional to your chances of receiving financial assistance. Use your networking skills. Before contacting a potential funder, ask your board, staff, and key volunteers if they have a personal connection with them. 

Grant Funding

Many nonprofits seek the bulk of their funding from grants. Typically, grants are awarded from three primary types of funders:

1. Government (local, state, and federal)
2. Private and public foundations
3. Businesses and corporations

Grants often provide significant supportive funds. Billions of dollars are available annually through grants. And grants are competitive–other organizations are seeking that funding too. Some grant applications involve completing a simple form, but most often, the grant application process is involved and time-consuming. Identifying grant sources, determining eligibility, and writing the grant proposal is not a simple endeavor. Some nonprofits have a staff member or department dedicated to grant research and application.

A great starting point to learn about navigating the grant process is the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ Grants.gov. The website provides a common forum for federal agencies to post funding opportunities and grant seekers to find and apply for them. Grants.gov also offers an extensive learning center with how-to blogs and video training resources. Many state and local governments offer similar websites, some with referrals to private foundation funders.

Getting Started

Grassroots fundraising, targeted funding, and grants–regardless of how an organization raises financing for an assistive listening project, it is always important to follow up.In the spirit of cultivating long-time donors, send a handwritten note of thanks to any funder who helps toward your ALS goal. Let them know how the new system is benefiting your school and helping all students participate fully and engage.

Related:
3 reasons instructional audio is a must-have in classrooms

States with formal policies around gifted and talented programs tend to identify more English learners and students with disabilities for those programs, according to a new study from NWEA, a not-for-profit research and educational services organization serving K-12 students.

The study uses data from the 2017-2018 Civil Rights Data Collection, the Stanford Education Data Archive, and the researchers’ own coding of individual states’ policies toward gifted and talented education.

A number of key themes emerged:

• The study confirms that English learners and students with disabilities are identified at rates that are 1/8 to 1/6 of their representation in the overall student population.
• State mandates for schools to offer services, requirements for formal gifted education plans, and regular audits for compliance are correlated with much higher rates of gifted service availability and equity for English learners and students with disabilities.
• The top 5 percent of schools with the highest equity of English learners identified as gifted were relatively lower achieving and had higher enrollments of students from low-income families.
• The top 5 percent of schools with the highest equity of students with disabilities identified as gifted were similar in size, achievement, and SES to the overall sample, but were smaller than the average school in the sample and had smaller, if more equitable, gifted and talented enrollment.

“One of the clearest takeaways from examining these data is the correlation between state policies and the more-equitable identification of gifted and talented students,” said Dr. Scott Peters, senior research scientist at NWEA.

States that had specific policies and mandates had greater enrollment in gifted and talented programs by English learners and students with disabilities. For example, if schools were required to have and maintain formal plans for gifted services, they were 10 percentage points more likely to offer services. In addition, those same schools were 23 percentage points more likely to offer gifted services if their home state proactively conducted audits for compliance.

However, Peters added, “where the data got more complex and less clear is in the characteristics of schools who identify gifted and talented English learners and students with disabilities at higher rates.”

The findings challenged typical stereotypes of schools that had the most proportional rates for English learners and students with disabilities in gifted and talented programs. For English learners, these schools were smaller, had lower average socio-economic status, had more students eligible for the Free and Reduced Lunch program, were located in lower achieving districts, and were lower average achieving themselves. For students with disabilities, the characteristics were less clear, with the only standout being that the schools were smaller than the average school in the sample and had smaller, if more equitable, gifted and talented enrollment. In addition, equity went up in schools in states that had gifted and talented under the office of Special Education.

“These findings suggest there is much more that needs to be studied about how these schools found success identifying English learners and students with disabilities for GT programs at greater rates,” said Dr. Angela Johnson, research scientist at NWEA and co-author of the study.

This press release originally appeared online.

Related:
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How AR can help students with special needs

Homework can be challenging for all children, but for students with autism, it can be challenging. It is common for children with autism to have difficulties with executive functioning abilities, including planning, organization, and prioritization.

In addition, they may have issues with focus, language, and social skills, all of which can make homework time challenging for both the youngster and their parents. For those of you who are raising a neurodivergent child, here are some strategies to implement when assisting them with homework:

Create a Routine

As children on the autism spectrum tend to flourish in structured environments, establishing a regular homework routine might make the process less stressful for them. Set aside dedicated study time, designate a quiet space, and make a visual schedule for completing assignments.

The plan might be as straightforward as a list of things to complete or as elaborate as a flowchart with icons representing each step. At the start of homework time, review the plan with your child and cross off items as they are finished. Seeing their growth and knowing what is coming may keep your child’s attention and enthusiasm high.

Incorporate Interests

Many students with autism have very specialized areas of interest. Making homework time more fun for your child might be as simple as including some of their favorite activities.

If your kid likes dinosaurs, you might make a math worksheet where they count and add little plastic dinosaurs. Adding some coloring or sketching to a writing project is a great way to engage an artistic kid.

You may motivate your child to do their homework by offering them a reward relevant to their interests, such as extra time spent on a favorite activity or reading a book about a fascinating topic.

Break Tasks into Smaller Chunks

Students with autism may become overwhelmed with large tasks, such as lengthy homework assignments or projects. Tasks may be broken down into smaller segments to make them more doable and encourage your youngster to complete them.

If your child is having trouble completing an entire math assignment, try dividing it into manageable chunks and giving them breaks between work periods. A timer may help them stay on track by dividing the work time; for example, you might devote 10 minutes to reading or complete ten math problems and then take a 5-minute break.

Incorporate Sensory Activities

Many children on the autism spectrum struggle with sensory processing issues that make it difficult for them to concentrate and remain calm while doing homework. Including sensory exercises during homework time can help with sensory regulation and increase concentration.

You can give your child something to fidget with, like a toy, sit on a yoga ball, or allow them to chew gum or suck on hard candy while they study. Dance parties or trampoline time might be used as movement breaks during homework time.

Provide Visual Supports

Children with autism can benefit significantly from visual supports because they give a tangible depiction of their task. Use visual aids to clarify expectations and keep your youngster on track. Each activity could be represented by a graphic or symbol and placed on a visual schedule or job list. A labeled box or container is a great visual aid for staying organized.

Make it a Game

Children with autism often enjoy games and may respond well to turning homework time into a game. To motivate your child to finish their schoolwork, you could use a deck of cards with different assignments on each card, make a board game, or try to beat a time limit.

Each completed task could earn your child a point, and they could compete with themselves or a family member. Another option is to turn homework into a treasure hunt by hiding tasks throughout the house and having them find the next clue after finishing each job.

Communicate with Your Child’s Teacher

Your child’s teacher can be a valuable resource for making homework easier for your child with autism. Discuss the positive and negative aspects of your child’s school experience with their teacher and work together to develop a strategy for homework. Your child’s teacher may be able to give additional support, such as a visual schedule or a quiet area to work during recess. In some instances, they may even be able to adjust your child’s homework to make it more achievable.

Homework can be a challenging time for children with autism and their parents. Finding the best strategies for your child may take some trial and error, but with patience and persistence, homework time can become a positive and productive experience for both you and your child.

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How we built a whole-child, wraparound approach to special education

District leaders report that one of the biggest challenges they face is a shortage of teachers, and in particular, a shortage of special education teachers. New data shows that this shortage is widespread and increasing. There is also a need for greater diversity within the profession.

Clear evidence confirms that having teachers reflect the demographics of their communities–when students of color have teachers that look like them–helps improve student learning. Growing your own (GYO) special education teacher pipeline provides a promising answer to the challenges of recruiting and retaining a diverse teacher workforce.

A GYO pipeline strategy is a program designed to address teacher shortages in schools by recruiting and training individuals from within the local community to become teachers. The program typically targets high school students, paraprofessionals, and other community members who may be interested in a career in teaching.

The program is called “Grow Your Own” because it emphasizes building up local talent and resources, rather than relying on external recruitment. The pipeline aspect of the program refers to the idea that participants are brought into the program early on and are provided with ongoing support and training as they progress towards becoming fully certified teachers. The program typically includes a combination of coursework, mentorship, and hands-on teaching experience. Participants may be provided with scholarships or stipends to help cover the cost of tuition and other expenses.

GYO: Different Shapes and Sizes

GYO programs are being rolled out across the country with two primary goals: growing and diversifying the teacher workforce. GYO programs come in many shapes and sizes, but they all focus on recruiting teachers from the community for the community. Using partnerships between school districts, colleges, and community organizations, education leaders are finding ways to encourage community members to enter the field.

The majority of GYO programs are rolled out at the district level, but more states are stepping in to provide funding and support. There is also emerging research about which GYO strategies seem to be the most effective.

New America conducted a 50-state scan to understand how communities are developing GYO programs. Many GYO programs are started at the local level with little state involvement, though that is shifting now in terms of funding and support. At least seven states fund statewide GYO programs and provide assistance to local school districts for GYO programs. State assistance is important, but many participants also feel that the strength of GYO programs is in their ability to understand and focus on local needs.

The New America project found that the most common and effective types of programs focus on recruiting high school students. A program in Minnesota, for example, helps high school students earn dual credit for education courses taken while in high school. Apprenticeship programs are also springing up that include high school and college courses combined with paid work-based learning. Tennessee is now serving as a model for other states. The state sponsors a permanent teacher occupation apprenticeship program that provides a work-based learning pathway to give students hands-on experience while earning money. Students are provided with job placement upon completion.

The second most common GYO program focuses on paraeducators. Some states offer scholarship programs to help paraeducators earn special education teaching degrees. Support for paraeducators is often locally based, with administrators tapping specific individuals to enroll in GYO programs. Programs can include scholarships, financial assistance, test preparation, academic advising, and on-the-job learning. The STEP UP and Teach Program offered by Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), for example, provides paraeducators with mentorship and partial tuition reimbursement. The program focuses on recruiting where the need is the strongest: potential special education, multilingual and multicultural, and STEM teachers.

Strong GYO Programs Need to Include Strategic Retention Strategies

For special educators, adding a strong retention component to GYO programs will be crucial. Attracting new teachers to the field is only half the battle, keeping them from leaving the field requires intentional evidence-based practices included in the GYO planning process.

Retention strategies need to focus on the main reasons special educators leave the field. The majority (84% percent) of special education teachers enter the field planning to stay. What happens? New teachers often have overly optimistic views about how they can make a difference in the lives of their students, but these new teachers sometimes lack the knowledge and skills needed to work effectively with students with disabilities within a school system.

One bright note found in recent research is that, not surprisingly, homegrown teachers have higher rates of retention. In addition, a new national study shows that special educators of color have higher retention rates, especially in urban schools. This is encouraging news that suggests that GYO programs are having some success in growing and diversifying the workforce and supporting teachers so that they remain in the profession.

By focusing on local resources–our high school students and paraprofessionals–and including strategic retention strategies, we are seeing encouraging signs that we are having an impact on reducing teacher shortages.

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Burnout is one of the leading causes of workforce shortages in U.S. schools and its impact is being felt by students who need consistent, high-quality educators the most. Some of the hardest hit are students with unique needs that require services from qualified professionals, such as speech-language pathologists, sign-language interpreters, teachers for the vision and hearing impaired and special education teachers. Special education positions have some of the highest number of vacancies in school districts across the US.

As the number of students who receive special education services continues to grow, there is an increased demand for special educators. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), school age students who receive special education services in public schools represented about 15 percent of enrollment in the 2020-21 school year, up from 13 percent in 2009-10.

While staffing schools continues to be a priority, teacher retention is key to successful positive outcomes on campuses for students. School administrators are taking a hard look at how to prevent burnout. Preventing burnout is essential in building a positive school climate, improving morale, and keeping professionals in the field of education.

When educators have the necessary professional resources to do their job with efficacy, they can provide better services to their students. A systematic review of research studies shows preliminary evidence that teacher burnout can impact student achievement and motivation, as well as contributing to teachers leaving the field of education. 

Leveraging the power of technology and remote learning

One way to alleviate burnout in education is to harness the power of technology to provide interventions to students with disabilities. The telepractice model is increasingly becoming a viable method of filling vacancies and alleviating the burden on existing staff, while still providing students with dedicated professionals.

Remote educators can meet student academic goals by grouping students in a variety of classroom settings (individual, small group, resource, whole-classroom instruction etc.). They can also provide case management for students who have Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), thereby reducing paperwork time for onsite educators. Implementing this model can help provide professional resources for onsite school staff by providing them with options to better meet the individual needs of students on their caseloads. 

1. Using remote educators to redistribute tasks

Balancing the demands of both direct teaching and indirect case management tasks has become increasingly challenging in light of staffing shortages.  While many are familiar with teacher tasks such as planning, teaching and meeting with parents, educators and school professionals are often overwhelmed because their position also includes tasks such as recordkeeping, counseling, serving on committees and after-school activities. In fact, teachers on average work about 54 hours per week, but spend 54 percent of their time on non-teaching activities, according to research by Merrimack College.

By employing remote educators and telepractitioners, districts can provide onsite teachers with flexible resources that can shift to meet the current needs of students on the campus. For example, a certified remote educator can provide direct instruction to special education students needing one-on-one or small group instruction to meet their needs in language arts and math. This frees up the on-site educator to focus on data collection and assessment preparation. Remote educators can also be responsible for case management by providing assistance with organizing and holding IEP meetings, in order to stay in compliance with district, state and federal guidelines. They can also create and maintain all special education documentation for students across grade levels.  

This is where remote educators can be an asset for school administrators.  This model provides more of a balance for both onsite and remote educators.  Duties and tasks can be redistributed efficiently and effectively, without having to recruit or physically relocate an individual.  Adding remote educators to the candidate pool that districts can hire from allows them to quickly fill positions and reduce teacher shortages. This also positively impacts onsite staff by bringing in much needed staff to support students and staff. 

2. Digital learning platforms designed to support and meet the needs of educators and school professionals

With the wide adoption of video conferencing and virtual tools, it is imperative to select the right digital platforms to support educators and school professionals.

Advances in technology have enabled educators to access educational resources and customize solutions for their students. Video conferencing provides an opportunity for a live face-to-face instruction with a teacher.  With the increase of digital resources teachers can use these tools to customize their instruction. The integration of technology encourages students to become more engaged in their instructional time. Remote educators can have access to a platform that includes video conferencing, scheduling tools, and supplemental materials.

3. Increased collaboration in serving students

Ask nearly any educator and school professional about the importance of collaboration and they will say a productive partnership among parents, counselors, therapists, and school administrators are essential, not only in helping ensure students stay engaged in the classroom but also in helping staff manage workloads. Multiple studies have shown that collaboration can improve academic outcomes and contribute to educators and school professionals being more satisfied in their jobs  which is a key contributor to reducing burnout and preventing them from leaving the profession.

For example, remote educators can work closely with onsite teachers to ensure that instruction is aligned with district curriculum to meet the IEP goals of students. This collaboration leads to improved support for both the students and onsite staff. Being able to video conference and communicate with parents and teachers maintains and fosters relationships with staff and stakeholders. By providing onsite staff with remote educator resources, they have greater opportunities to facilitate collaboration in order to increase academic outcomes for their students. 

Teletherapy and remote learning have been around for decades, but mostly outside of schools and in private practices. The digital transformation that is reshaping nearly every industry is now changing the education profession, and these practices are starting to be introduced within schools. A more holistic approach to education staffing that includes telepractice holds the potential to reduce educator burnout and ease the workforce shortage – and that is a win-win for educators, school administrators, parents and, most of all, students.

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Virtual schools can serve students with special needs—and do it well

At the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning at Ulster Board of Cooperative Education Services (BOCES), we have developed the architecture to accomplish and codify a leadership approach to help schools consider how to reach our most marginalized and vulnerable students.

Four years ago, my team and I designed, planned, and implemented a research-based, whole-child wraparound approach to special education. To get our initial pilot off the ground, we brought in stakeholders from across our organization: teachers, teaching assistants (TAs), aides, counselors, occupational therapists, physical therapists, speech language pathologists, positive intervention team members, administrators, and the wider community, along with content area experts through our instructional services.

The pilot grew from five classrooms into a full-school implementation in the second year due to the county’s demand and the success of the program. We recently had the honor of presenting our model to stakeholders from across the country at AESA’s most recent conference.

When you enter a special ed classroom at Ulster BOCES, you can see a reflection of our values through careful consideration of the needs of each student. With neurodiverse and SEL practices at the forefront, advanced use of adaptive technology, and nature-based programming, we develop the love of the arts, literacy, numeracy, and inquiry skills in authentic ways to prepare our learners for lifelong success.

Each space, piece of furniture, curricular material, and multi-sensory practice was intentionally designed around a foundation of research-based practices. In addition, we incorporated the multisensory Orton-Gillingham approach for reading instruction, which has shown great success with many of our students. We also implemented the Zones of Regulation curriculum, Ross Green’s Collaborative Proactive Solutions, and Eric Jensen’s Teaching with the Brain in Mind practices, all of which serve as key foundational resources for our staff and students.  

This whole-child wraparound model is even more critical now that students and educators are facing what may be the most difficult year yet. Our K-12 pathway for special education focuses on understanding and supporting our students’ stories, dreams, and abilities, in order to help them maximize their infinite potential. Building upon a community of inclusivity, educational excellence, and clinical expertise, we provide innovative and safe academic and social-emotional learning opportunities that cultivate the best selves of all our community members.

Throughout the process of implementing our whole-child approach, we looked to our four core values to guide us:

1. Unique Self: We strive to see our learners, both adults and students, and their stories. We aim to understand how our individuals learn best, to personalize their learning journey, and empower them to know themselves, to find joy, and to maximize their infinite human potential.
2. Capacity: We are committed to investing in our staff to create highly trained learning specialists, to achieve instructional excellence, to support meaningful learning experiences, and to continue exploring and growing as we engage with our students and as their capacity grows.
3. Community: We cultivate a warm, therapeutic, family environment that fosters a sense of belonging. We nourish community members by emphasizing wellness, safety, and empathy. We believe strong relationships support self-actualization.
4. Cycles of Inquiry: We believe all learning should be joyful, rigorous, and passion-based. We believe inquiry encourages students to identify their dreams, advocate for their needs, and contribute to their communities. Through play and service learning, we create experiential and therapeutic learning opportunities that encourage learners to know their own value and appreciate their potential to affect our world for the better. We are literacy- and numeracy-centered.

As our program has continued to expand to meet the county’s demand, we have led with the whole-child wraparound model, which has three defined domains with the learner at the center:

• Each individual learner’s story;
• Their learning journey; and
• A healthy environment.

The Individual Story

At the center of our model is the unique self of each learner. We base everything we do on the individual needs and backgrounds of our students. We must know their story, history, and how they are showing up to us. Their unique story is used to cultivate an individualized plan to help the student grow and be a part of their community. For example, it’s critical that we understand the child beyond their individualized education program (IEP). This includes their history, culture, dreams, and any experiences that have shaped who they are today, such as trauma, poverty, or medical needs.

Opening the Learning Journey

We believe in an intentional focus on literacy, numeracy, and assistive technology. This model engages classroom teachers as well as reading teachers, math teachers, behavior intervention specialists, and assistive technology specialists, to name a few. Equally important for student success is our investment in building and supporting our staff and leaders’ capacity for professional growth.

We have established “whole-child team meetings” in which our instructional staff, teachers, TAs, aides, and related service providers meet regularly to discuss student progress and reflect on our instructional practices with all experts at the table.

Creating a Healthy Environment

Relationships are at the foundation of our work, and the environment in which we cultivate those relationships creates our community. Maintaining a healthy community requires therapeutic spaces where all adults and students feel safe. We design our classrooms and all spaces with intention, from color to comfort to accessibility to efficiency. To design with all students in mind, we get to know who they really are, read their IEPs, observe, listen, learn, and make decisions based on individual needs.

Each and every learning space we use for our students was designed with a particular focus and philosophy. For example, we have zen dens where students can relax, take a break, or do some art. We have calming rooms within our elementary classrooms where students can listen to music, use sensory materials, or simply be in a quiet place to practice their breathing.

We will continue to actively seek best practices for our most marginalized students. I believe the time is now to extend care for our building administrators and our educators so they, too, can care for our students.

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Creating support ecosystems for neurodivergent learners

We all know the problem. There is a frightening shortage of special education teachers and it’s getting worse. Even prior to the pandemic, 98 percent of school districts and 49 states reported that they had a shortage and a recent RAND report found that six months into the pandemic over one-third of school leaders were experiencing special education teacher vacancies.

Compounding the problem, the number of students receiving special education services is predicted to increase sharply as students who are overdue for evaluations seek help and others who have fallen behind during COVID will need additional assessments and revised services. Increases in diagnoses, particular in children diagnosed with autism, are also having an impact. Today 1 in every 44 children in the US have autism and students with autism now account for 11 percent of all students in special education, more than double the rate of a decade ago.

The Special Education Legislative Summit Council of Administrators of Special Education has called for “all hands on deck” in addressing the shortage. Speakers at the Summit highlighted three crucial areas that need to be addressed: competitive pay, stronger recruitment, and more effective professional development. But what does effective PD look like for special educators? Is it different from what other teachers need? What works? What kind? How much? And, most importantly, what types of PD will support these educators and keep them from leaving the profession?  

We now know a great deal about what types of PD can not only support our special education teachers but help them thrive. In this new era of inclusive education — a positive development — we still need to focus on helping special educators by affirming the passion and caring that led them to enter the field in the first place. The big takeaway is that we need PD that helps these teachers affirm their professional identity, develop deeper understandings of the norms, language and routines of their profession, and helps them succeed in what matters most to them — making a difference in the lives of their students. Specifically, they need learning opportunities that are classroom-embedded, specialized, ongoing, and flexible.

Classroom-Embedded PD

Special educators report that they have had good training experiences outside of the classroom, but they also say that when the time comes to implement this new knowledge into their classrooms there is a big disconnect. The theories taught are important, but practical strategies for executing them into daily classroom experiences are missing.

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Classroom-embedded PD helps teachers immediately apply and practice what they are learning directly to their classroom experiences. As they try out new skills they can receive immediate feedback, reflect on their teaching, and continuously adjust and improve their practices in real time. Expert facilitators need to have a deep understanding of each school and classroom’s unique challenges and culture and use data-based strategies to target specific needs, model evidence-based practices, and provide opportunities for hands-on work to build teachers’ skills, knowledge, and confidence.

Specialized Learning Opportunities

Special educators report on PD experiences that are overly generic and are aimed at the larger school or district environment and fail to provide them with what they need to be effective in reaching their specific goals within their own unique classrooms. Professional learning needs to be connected to the curriculum with specialized and relevant content that will serve to develop and deepen teachers’ ability to effectively implement the curriculum.

PD that focuses on strategies connected to specific curriculum content directly transfers into more effective teaching practices. Learning can drill down to focus on immediate and specific needs such as implementing data management systems and reviewing the fidelity of an implementation. Trainers can also step in and help teachers create individualized assessments, progress monitoring and progression planning as well as develop recommendations for tailoring IEP goals to align with student capacity and grade-level standards.

Ongoing Support

The majority of special education teachers report that their PD experiences were brief and typically take place during conferences. These one-off sessions present few opportunities for reflection, fail to deepen skills or pedagogical knowledge, and infringe upon the teachers’ time for planning.

Darling-Hammond and her colleagues report that the duration and intensity of professional learning has a clear and positive association with student achievement. They found that PD programs that included an average of 49 hours per year resulted in a 21 percent increase in student achievement. They emphasize that the number of hours spent and the duration of time — typically spreading out PD over the course of a school year — are crucial to seeing significant improvement in teachers’ abilities and student success.

Flexible Options Using Technology

Intentional use of technology can provide flexibility, facilitate access, and save schools and teachers time and money. Teachers andschool administrators report that they want the flexibility of virtual PD, but they also find that in-person options result in greater engagement and learning. We know that in-person training lends itself to being classroom-embedded and tied to specific curricula — all factors outlined above that result in effective outcomes. At the same time, in person is expensive, sometimes difficult to implement, and lacks the flexibility of online options.

But perhaps we can have our cake and eat it too? Webinars and videos that supplement classroom-embedded PD can serve to deepen learning. In addition, some promising new technologies can provide options that can approximate classroom-embedded PD. One example is eCoaching and BIE (Bug-in-Ear) technologies that have been shown to effectively provide performance feedback to teachers and specialists without a coach being physically present. Rural schools, in particular, could greatly benefit from this type of learning experience due to the challenges of getting trainers out to remote areas.

It is important to reduce pay disparities and create more robust recruitment strategies for special educators, but the bottom line is that if these teachers find that they don’t have the support they need to be effective in the classroom, they will continue to leave. Let’s focus on what matters most and provide them with learning opportunities that we know can help them succeed in making a difference in their students’ lives.

A learning disorder that can impact a child’s ability to read or interpret words, letters, and other symbols—but that doesn’t affect general intelligence—dyslexia often goes unnoticed until a student displays significant struggles with reading and/or writing. The most common of all neuro-cognitive disorders, dyslexia impacts about 20 percent of the US population and represents 80-90 percent percent of all individuals who have learning disabilities.

In some cases, a dyslexia diagnosis doesn’t happen until a student is in second grade, with some cases going unnoticed until the learner is already in high school. With research showing that interventions are the most effective when they are done in kindergarten and first grade, the earlier the intervention the better.

To avoid an even bigger learning gap, we need to take a closer look at early identification, the early warning signs to look for, and what steps to take if you suspect dyslexia. 

Early identification is key

The earlier we intervene, the easier it is to address and remediate students’ difficulties. Early identification has been found to be essential in helping students succeed in school and later in life. Students with dyslexia need to be provided with interventions that are specific to their needs.

If intervention is not provided before third grade, for example, it’s 75 percent more likely that students will continue to experience reading and writing difficulties going into high school. Not only are they affected academically, but students are also affected emotionally. Struggling students can see their self-esteem and motivation decrease when they find that their peers are doing better while they are struggling despite all the time and effort they put into their reading and writing tasks.

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Technology helps to level the playing field for students with dyslexia. Digital curriculum, can give teachers access to a full curriculum and supplementary instructional components, including daily progress notes, words correct per minute (WCPM) data, student attendance and time spent in the curriculum.

What are the early signs of dyslexia?

Dyslexia can be spotted as early as in preschool. Some of the signs to look for include:

• Difficulty with naming the letters of the alphabet, numbers and days of the week
• Difficulty writing/spelling their name
• Difficulty with directional words
• Unable to follow a set of instructions
• Struggles with rhymes
• Struggles to call things by their name
• Mispronounces words
• Speaks less than other children their age

As part of the early detection process, we also need to consider if there is a history of dyslexia and/or learning difficulties in the family. Research has shown that dyslexia runs in families and it has been found that as many as 49 percent of parents of identified students also have dyslexia.

First steps to take

Once you think that a student may have dyslexia, it’s important to take action so that an evaluation can be conducted. The school’s principal, counselor and the child’s teacher should meet with his or her parents to discuss the student’s performance and next steps. In many instances, students will be placed in RTI (Response to Intervention), where the teacher will address the identified learning gaps and monitor for progress.

If progress is not made, a formal evaluation will be conducted to determine if the student has a learning disability. There are local and state guidelines plus various pieces of legislation in place to oversee this process. In Texas, for example, the “Texas Dyslexia Handbook” states that once a student is showing signs of dyslexia, a referral for a full and individual initial evaluation (FIIE) should be initiated (versus waiting to see if a student has made progress in RTI).

In other words, it’s not necessary to wait and see if the student has made progress in RTI. The results of the assessments conducted under the FIIE as well as other data (e.g., RTI progress monitoring, classroom performance/observations, family history and so forth) will help the committee determine whether the student has a learning disability.

Since early intervention is so vital for students with dyslexia, it’s important that parents, caregivers and teachers all recognize and understand its early indicators and take action quickly.

Since March 2020, we have all assuredly witnessed firsthand the importance of our community – our friends, family, co-workers, and loved ones who supported us, helped us deal with the layers of adversity, and played a critical role in helping us come out of the pandemic stronger. 

While ecosystems are important to all individuals, they are especially crucial to the caregivers and families of neurodivergent learners. Ecosystems for these individuals help provide a sense of belonging for those going through similar experiences, but also serve as a community or network of confidantes and advisors who can help give families direction when time is of the essence.  

Educational professionals play a starring role in learner ecosystems and help bolster them as they provide a listening ear, a credible source of support and validate recommendations to parents.

Let’s take a look at how these ecosystems operate and examine the role they play for neurodivergent learners, their parents, and the professionals who comprise them. 

What is a Learner Ecosystem?

I see a learner’s ecosystem as a community that provides layers of vital support to its members. 

You may be working closely with a psychologist, a learner’s teacher, and a behaviorist. But what if your learner’s teacher says you need to start working with a Speech and Language Pathologist (SLP)? Many parents would instantly feel a sense of confusion or anxiety because they have very little idea where to begin in contacting an SLP, vetting them, and initiating support services. Maybe the psychologist recommends that you find an Executive Functioning Coach for your child, which sparks questions for many caregivers: Are there any in your area who have the availability to see your child, and what qualifications are required? Starting these processes can be daunting and therefore cause a time delay, preventing caregivers and their children from getting started on their journey towards reaching their full potential. 

Creating an ecosystem for your learner–from the professionals you work with to your fellow parents to social media groups and online forums–can provide you with a powerful set of resources that can make your search for answers more effective and less time consuming. It’s also vital to reducing stress and anxiety, so you can put your best foot forward and set your learner up for success.

Professionals, as an important part of neurodivergent learners’ ecosystems, benefit from work with other specialists, empowering all who work with the learner to see greater strides. A strong ecosystem is a win-win for all involved! 

How to Create Your Learner’s Ecosystem

The first thing you need to do in order to create your ecosystem is to understand what is the top priority, the most pressing need for your learner. Ask your learner’s teacher, school team, and/or psychologist about which specialists you should engage with first. If your learner has specific gaps in their learner profile, start there first. Address these gaps, and as you are doing so, start building your ecosystem by speaking with the professionals you are working with and the fellow parents you come across. 

One of the best ways to make your ecosystem work for you is to build strong relationships with the professionals and peers you trust. Provide value for them – referring a great psychologist to new clients, for example – while also articulating what your current needs are: “If you know any Occupational Therapists you recommend, let me know.” Do the same thing with your fellow parents: if you have worked extensively with a range of behaviorists, try posting something on a social media group letting other parents know that you are happy to provide guidance in this area. 

The same goes for professionals. If you have patient referrals from other professionals, ask them for any specialists that they would recommend. Start compiling a list of specialists, what age groups they serve, where they are located, and whether they have capacity to take on new clients. Check in with them consistently to see if their availability, expertise, or focus has changed. 

In order to create your ecosystem, you need to be a lynchpin of other ecosystems. Like any relationship, you are going to get out what you put in. 

Post Diagnosis: The Importance of Speed to Treatment

So many of us who have neurodivergent children know the feeling of stress and helplessness that sets in post diagnosis. Caregivers and family members feel overwhelmed, and yet time is critical: studies have shown that better outcomes are directly tied to early intervention. 

At the same time, many people will encounter waitlists for treatment, as the learner falls further and further behind. This wastes critical weeks and months where a learner could be placed on a path towards a higher quality, more enjoyable long-term future. 

Professionals play a key role through their ecosystems at this stage. Because parents are just starting along this journey, they do not have their knowledge base established. Caregivers will need more guidance at this time than any other. Furthermore, professionals have a better sense through their network of what specialists a learner may need to see and who has capacity to see them. 

The faster a family and their professionals can develop a game plan for treatment, the better the outcome will be – while also expediting neurodivergent learners’ feelings of success and boosting overall self-confidence. 

In early 2020, 7.3 million students received special education services as required by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), according to the National Center for Education Statistics. That’s 14% of K–12 students in public schools in the United States who depend on additional—and often very specialized—services to support their ability to learn and live their lives fully.

But once the pandemic set in and schools closed their doors, the elaborately precarious systems that have been constructed to meet the needs of these students collapsed.

In October 2020, a little more than two- thirds of K-12 principals estimated that their students with disabilities would perform somewhat or much lower than they had before the pandemic. A year later, a November 2021 survey by the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates—an advocacy group for students in special education and their families—found that 86% of parents reported that their child experienced learning loss, skill regression or slower-than-expected progress in school.

The predictability of our current situation is tragic. But to blame this entirely on the pandemic is a mistake. Even before the pandemic hit, there were signs that serious trouble was brewing for students with disabilities. COVID only exacerbated a looming problem.

As districts emerge from the pandemic, how can school leaders ensure they are rebuilding and reimagining an educational experience that ensures special education students have access to equitable outcomes? A whole-child approach to special education will help accelerate the learning of this unique population.

A Whole-Child Approach for Every Child

Too often, students in special education are marginalized and lack access to the supports they need to develop academically, let alone as full human beings.

Our goal should be to ensure students leave school literate and passionate, with access to a full life and knowledge of their true selves. When a student comes to us, we should work to understand that whole child, beginning with where they’re coming from, what they need, and what they hope to accomplish. An IEP is generally a helpful document if you want to understand a student’s learning needs. But we need to get to a place where we look beyond the IEP; to help that child articulate who they are and what they aspire to be.

Building Community Around Each Student

At Ulster, we have designed our services around the belief that the student must be at the center of their educational experience. We accomplish this with the help of a staff trained to understand that they are all individual members of a community around each student. First we ask what the student is bringing to our school and think about what wraparound services that individual child will need. Then we ask: Who are the adults who will be interacting with them daily?

There may be nearly a dozen adults affecting one student’s life every day when they are in the school building, including their teacher, a teaching assistant and/or an aid, a physical therapist, a speech counselor, or social worker, to mention a few others. If that student is experiencing a crisis, we may call in our positive intervention team (or PIT crew), an administrator, or even someone from the community outside our school or their family, because our instructional model allows for unique, or “nontraditional” systems of support.

Whatever the child needs, we provide. We have literacy coaches, math coaches, and assistive technology experts. We focus on individualized learning and also are developing our teachers and student’s capacity for Process Based Learning (PBL).  We don’t try to fit our students into the systems we have, rather we do the opposite and build our systems around the students we have.

As an educational service agency, we are fortunate to have more resources and more adults to wrap around our students. But the fact that our model is the exception and not the rule, is frustrating. Students with special needs often require access to tools, edtech, and assistive tech to be able to level up and perform right alongside their peers. But they also need high quality learning opportunities. Achieving literacy and numeracy cannot be the only thing we aspire to for these students. They can achieve so much more, and they deserve to achieve more, even if it requires more resources.

Creating Learning Spaces That Allow Students to “Be”

It seems obvious, but if you are going to adopt a “whole-child” approach that values and celebrates the uniqueness and specialness of each individual child, then the physical design of the space must also reflect those values. Some students cannot concentrate if they are sitting in an uncomfortable chair. That’s an easy fix. But some students cannot focus or breathe properly unless they are lying on their stomachs. Not only have we designed our spaces to accommodate these types of needs, but critically, we have normalized the idea that we can and should do what we can to ensure students can show up ready to learn.  The “traditional” classroom, with rows of desks in perfect lines, was designed as a way to manage—or quash—disruptive behavior. And that’s great if your ultimate goal is compliance. But that’s not “whole-child,” is it? We want our students to learn and thrive, and if they can’t do that when they are uncomfortable, then we have an obligation to make those changes.

But we also are working very hard to model and promote agency and self-regulation, and so we have also created “zones” within our learning spaces where students can move to if they can’t otherwise communicate a need to an adult. For example, maybe a student begins to feel very anxious, and the noise and everyday classroom conversations are becoming overwhelming and they feel themselves shutting down. They may not have the ability at that stage to raise their hand, interrupt class, and politely ask if they can go somewhere quiet. Instead, we have those spaces built into our classrooms, and our students know that they can access those spaces when they need it, no matter what, no questions asked. Autonomy. Agency. Self-regulation. That’s what it looks like to model these skills.

Another physical space that is woefully underutilized—in all schools, for all students, but particularly for students with special needs—is the outdoors. At Ulster, we have an outdoor education program, Camp Ramapo, that all of our students are able to visit multiple times throughout the school year, with some of our highest need students having even more frequent rotations. We’ve found that being in nature and using nature to guide learning has a beneficial effect on our most aggressive students. In addition to academic lessons, students at Camp Ramapo also receive therapeutic support. While we recognize that this type of space may not be feasible in every school or district, but schools can and should be utilizing outdoor spaces for formal learning more than they typically do.

Love Is Not Enough

Social-emotional learning is nothing new at Ulster, especially in our special education classes. Love and nurturing are where everything starts for us. Community and relationships are at the center of our work; our district leadership prioritizes a teamwork approach to school culture where at the foundation of a strong, inclusive learning community. Trust me when I tell you that we very much value love and respect and dignity.

But love is not enough.

These kids need to learn. Love is necessary, but not sufficient, so we’ve been pushing back on this pervasive idea that love is all we need. These are smart kids, and they can succeed in school and in life, but we need to find the right combination of support and offerings—and plenty of love—to help them unlock their potential.

If we start with the assumption that these students are capable and worthy of a quality education experience, the whole game changes. We don’t need to “fix” kids. They are already whole. We, as an education system, just need to give the whole child the tools and support they need to self-regulate and find a passion for learning.

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.

A collaboration between two schools co-located in a midtown Manhattan campus has bridged both of their missions in the most fruitful way possible: a hands-on project giving their respective students real-world life skills.

Students at Urban Assembly School of Design and Construction have donned the role of architects, designing a one-bedroom apartment for their “clients” at P.S. 138M, a District 75 school serving children with moderate to severe disabilities.

Allie Collacchi, a special education teacher and unit coordinator from the District 75 school, had long tried to find a space for her students to practice basic household skills, like making a bed or hanging clothes in a closet.

“We can watch videos, and we can practice on worksheets, but we can’t show them the physical skills of how to do it,” Collacchi said.

While thinking about ways to improve the teaching of life skills, she noticed that the second floor at 525 W. 50th St. had a large storage room that was mostly unused. She started dreaming of turning the space into a one-bedroom apartment where students could get hands-on practice. 

She detailed her vision during a campus-wide meeting with the five school principals who share the building. As soon as Collacchi described her idea, Meredith Matson, principal of the Urban Assembly School of Design and Construction, thought about a collaboration: her students could design the layout for the apartment. 

That’s when the project was born. 

“My students are always creating projects, but to be able to actually speak to the clients directly, get input from them, and then to be able to make the layout seems like such an amazing opportunity,” said Matson.  

Matson’s students are high schoolers in a Career and Technical Education, or CTE, program. CTE programs are designed to provide academic and work-based experiences to high school students. There are more than 130 high schools in New York City with CTE programs. At the School of Design and Construction, students learn design and architecture skills. 

“The mission of our school is to ensure that all of our students are able to design a pathway outside of high school, whether it’s college or career. And I think that a project like this is so essential to having real-world, hands-on experience where students can self discover who they want to be and what they want to explore,” said Matson.  

Under the guidance of design teacher Bartek Walicki, students started working on floor plans for the space and created a furniture wish list. Meanwhile, P.S. 138M teachers had the idea to approach IKEA in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

Teachers have been taking students to IKEA on field trips prior to COVID for more than a decade, Collachi said, making it a natural fit for a partner.

“The idea of walking through apartment layouts and having the kids navigate different environments has been a nice thing for us to add into our curriculum,” she explained. The school was excited when the Swedish-based company was on board to provide the furniture.

But the project, which started in January, isn’t ready for that part yet.

As the academic year comes to an end, the students from the School of Design and Construction have their final blueprints. They had shared drafts with the other school’s special education teachers, who then sent them critiques. Finally, the students made alterations, just like a professional architect would make for a client.

The building process is expected to start in September. The schools’ custodial department will lead the building process, but students from both schools will be welcomed to help assemble furniture. The goal is to get the project done at no cost.

The two schools found an authentic connection through the collaboration. “Our schools are working together for a common goal, regardless of the students’ ability or disability,” said Collacchi. 

Students at P.S. 138M are 14 to 21 years old and have a variety of physical, cognitive, and emotional disabilities. Practicing life skills for living independently is a foundational part of their school work. Through the brand-new life skills learning lab, they will be able to practice with their hands rather than using worksheets. 

“The idea is to teach them about each part of the apartment and what it takes to maintain a living space. How do I clean my entire apartment? How do I stock the fridge? Being able to make your own meals, looking at expiration dates, and setting a table. We’ll teach them about rent, bills, and electricity,” Collacchi said. “For some of our kids with mobility issues, being able to go from their bedroom to the bathroom independently would be a huge increase to their life at home.”

During the remote part of the pandemic, Collacchi’s students struggled. 

“We have a big group of students who cannot access remote learning. Sitting at a computer for anything over a couple minutes was just not feasible,” she said.  

“Coming back, after a couple years, what’s been really ingrained in our minds is how important these life skills are. And we’ve kind of let go of some of the intensity of reading about a current event, as opposed to knowing how to get up and brush your teeth and put on deodorant and pick out clothes and come to school and appropriate dress for the winter.”

Many of the architecture students also struggled with remote learning, and the project has given them a chance to practice hands-on skills.

Design teacher Walicki instructed his class to think of Collacchi and her students as their clients, giving them a chance to practice a real-world scenario. They visited the space and learned about the group’s specific needs. 

Walicki divided the students into groups and broke down the tasks into brainstorming, measuring, and prototyping. Then they used the three-dimensional software SketchUp to design their final models. “The biggest challenge for them was to work in a team measuring an existing space, remembering there are three dimensions not just two and using fractions,” Walicki said. 

Cinthya Rocano, a 17-year-old junior, said the project was fun and a new experience for her. 

“We usually would do mini-apartments or cubic houses for practice, but for this we had a specific purpose and mission to help the students in P.S. 138. We had to keep other people in mind to help improve their environment,” she said. 

Rocano said that they designed cabinets and shelves thinking about the height that would allow people who use wheelchairs to comfortably reach. The kitchen counter, for example, needed to be low in height while also having space to fit a wheelchair underneath. 

Juan Calero, a 16-year-old sophomore, said working on this project was exciting and a good transition from virtual school. “During remote learning, it was all paperwork. We would draw floor plans. But this project really helped us see how school was before [COVID] started. It was a good project to get us back to normal school. We were able to start implementing skills like cutting, drawing, and gluing things together.”

Aaron Adlam-Ferguson, who is also a 16-year-old sophomore, wants to be a residential architect and go to college for architecture. “I really enjoyed this project because it opened my mind. We had to think about what we had to put into the room corresponding to the kids’ needs.”

Having to think of a specific client made this project a new experience for the students. 

In December, the Board of Regents asked for increased funding for CTE programs, but didn’t get it approved in Albany. Mayor Eric Adams and New York City schools Chancellor David Banks have often voiced support for CTE programs, highlighting that high school should put young people in a position to succeed as young adults regardless of their desire to pursue further education. 

That was the case for 16-year-old transfer student Jovany Amaro. Amaro said that before this experience he had no idea what was behind construction and design. But the project led him to research careers and now he feels confident about his future as an architect or designer. 

“It just opened a lot of doors for me. And I’m still learning because I’m so new to it, but I want to keep going,” he said. 

Nathaniel Bastardo, a 16-year-old sophomore, wants to be a certified architect and this project helped him get a little closer to his dream. 

“This school completely takes your mind off of COVID or whatever stress you have outside school. It is like a hug you always wanted, it shelters you from everything,” Bastardo said. “It basically gives you the necessary skills to put yourself on a good future, unlike other schools that I’ve been to. It prepares you for your life. And I love it.”

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education.

Close to half of student may have a learning different, and more than half of parents in say they have sought supplemental learning services for their child, according to a recent survey.

The 2022 Learnfully Neurodiversity Report, from personalized learning platform Learnfully, surveyed parents and educators across the U.S. and examines awareness of learning differences and the impact of neurodiversity on educators, learners, and parents.

The report found that 41 percent of kids may have a learning difference, with 24 percent having a confirmed diagnosis and another 17 percent of parents suspecting their child has a learning difference, a number that is much higher – more than double – than accepted industry statistics.

In addition, nearly 70 percent of parents think that educational therapy, in which an educator or specialist works one-on-one with a student outside of the classroom, should be provided by schools.  

Among parents surveyed, the report found that:

Beyond the classroom: 57 percent of parents have sought supplemental learning services for their child, such as private tutoring or specialized education support

Growing demand for supplemental services: 25 percent would spend over $500 per month or $6,000 annualized to improve their child’s educational outcomes

Covid-19 drives parental engagement: 47 percent of parents are more involved in their kids’ education since the pandemic

Parents want teachers to gain more support: Just 55 percent of parents believe that their child’s schools provide the support needed to their teachers to make all learners successful. 

Learning differences impact mental health: 35 percent of parents who have a child with a learning difference said their or their spouses mental health has been impacted.

Among educators who were surveyed, the report found that: 

Need for supplemental services: A majority of teachers (54 percent) said that nearly 1 in 3 of their students would benefit from supplemental education services.

Struggling with SEL: 62 percent of teachers say they have students who are coping with Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) challenges.

Going the extra mile: 60 percent of respondents spent at least $100 out of their own pocket to improve student outcomes

“In the wake of the pandemic, learners across age ranges need personalized and supplemental services to enhance their educational trajectory,” said Letha McLaren, CEO and Co-Founder, Learnfully. “Our one of a kind, strength-based program caters to student needs and their motivations, helping learners develop confidence and fall in love with the process of learning.”

The survey is based on the responses of more than 300 parents and educators surveyed in March 2022. 

According to the CDC, 9.4 percent of children have ADHD. Teachers are often familiar with the associated behaviors of ADHD. Each child’s presentation of ADHD is unique. Some of the most common symptoms of ADHD include difficulty sustaining attention, completing assigned tasks at school (often including homework), physical restlessness, strain in social relationships and appearing off task due to daydreaming.

With nearly one in 10 kids struggling with some form of ADHD, it can put a strain on teachers in the classroom. For teachers and school systems, often the best way to manage ADHD in the classroom is to form a partnership with parents to develop a consistent strategy that can help children manage their ADHD behaviors. Consistency of care between a child’s home life and their school activities can provide the best support and least amount of disruption for the child as they transition between school and home. 

It is important to remember that the child’s brain is rapidly developing. Often they are not cognitively or emotionally developed enough to change their own behaviors. They need care and support from their parents and school systems. In many cases, teachers are aware of effective strategies for supporting children with ADHD, while parents are in new, uncharted territory as they begin to learn about the best ways to support their child.

In many school systems, teachers can look to clinicians to help develop joint parent-teacher strategies for supporting children in the classroom. Consistency of approach between home and school ensures the best outcome in both locations.

ADHD and behavioral therapy

Many clinicians use behavioral therapy to help students, parents and teachers manage the symptoms of ADHD. Behavioral therapy provides children with an array of skills that will help them be successful in the classroom and navigate through their interpersonal relationships.

Behavioral therapy supports people with ADHD and other mental health disorders by identifying negative behaviors and attempting to replace maladaptive behaviors with behaviors that build self-esteem, promote social engagement, boost positive academic participation, and provide emotional well-being. Behavioral therapy is often used in conjunction with medication.

Two key pieces of a behavioral plan are consistency and positive reinforcement.

Consistency: getting the parents on the same page

Like all children, students with ADHD thrive on consistency. Parent support and training is critical to a child’s success in school, as it empowers the parent to understand and implement behavioral management techniques, reinforce consistent routines, and set clear expectations.

Clinicians work with parents and teachers to develop strategies that use structure, consistency, and positive communication. Sometimes the clinician will visit the child in school and in their home life to ensure that the two sets of routines and expectations are aligned. This multi-layer approach involves regular check-ins to monitor progress and provide additional support. Behavioral plans can be modified as necessary based on the child’s behavior.

Positive feedback: catch them in the act of doing a good thing

Many children with ADHD struggle with low self-esteem. For a behavioral intervention to work, it has to be strongly rooted in praise. Children should receive four times as much praise as criticism. This is a classic example of catching them in the act of doing something good and praising that behavior. It’s important to set clear expectations for children, but they shouldn’t feel as if they’re being punished. Praising them for their positive behavior is more likely to affect the desired behavioral change than negative feedback. Children with ADHD have likely received significant amounts of negative feedback and can be sensitive to being singled out at home and in the classroom.

Working together

The very thing that schools require of children, sitting still, paying attention, and waiting until being called upon are exactly the behaviors that are difficult for children with ADHD. Without a plan in place, children with ADHD may struggle with focus, emotional regulation, impulse control, organization, and social skills. Given all of this, school can become a challenging place to be, and everyone in the child’s support system must work together to ensure that the child can experience success in the classroom.

To successfully support children with ADHD in the classroom, a teacher must be in partnership with the child’s parents. The parents and teachers need to communicate frequently. Sometimes that communication can be as simple as a quick chat during drop-off with younger kids, or it may be a lengthier conversation via email, a classroom app, or phone call. The teacher-parent relationship requires alignment, delivering consistent feedback to a child, lavishing praise, and working towards reforming disruptive behaviors. While teachers may have significant experience with children and ADHD, each child is different. Teachers can help parents by working together to execute a behavioral plan that establishes consistent routines and expectations.

The pandemic brought special education to the forefront of the dialogue about education, with the media focus mainly directed at sharing stories of students separated from the in-school supports that they had come to rely upon, and parents struggling to plug the gaps.

While the challenges were undeniable, there was also a more quietly growing chorus of stories from parents whose children experienced virtual education for the first time and found that the personalization and environmental stability it brought led to positive outcomes. When it comes to serving students with disabilities, a fully virtual school experience may, at the outset, seem like a less than ideal or even an improbable concept. But there can be compelling benefits.

“When I first began working with students virtually, I was skeptical that the therapeutic environment could be replicated online,” said Robin Corder, EdS, NCSP, who won the Idaho School Psychologist of the Year Award in 2020. “I was very wrong about that.”

As a whole, parents often cite flexibility, convenience, the ability to focus, and reductions in bullying, health risks, and social anxiety as reasons for choosing virtual schools. With more districts offering virtual options for families, serving children with disabilities should be at the top of their priorities, and it’s worth underscoring what can be learned from the infrastructure and experiences of established virtual models.

Setting Standards for Virtual Schools

Research attributes approximately 40 percent of the enrollment drop in traditional public schools to the corresponding increase in enrollment in established virtual school programs.

This trend was most prominent in states such as Florida and Pennsylvania, which had been building out large in-state virtual schools for a decade or more prior to the pandemic: virtual schools grew most in states that already had established virtual school enrollment in place. Not surprisingly, this affirms that parents recognize and credit the difference between an established program designed from the beginning to serve students virtually versus the quickly spun-up virtual programs created by many public districts in response to COVID-related school closures.

Many of the media stories about underserved parents and students with special needs were centered on what was experienced in new virtual offerings created by public districts in response to school closures. There are three prevailing practices among high-performing virtual schools that serve students with special needs well:

1. Parent Engagement

We’ve seen time and time again that kids do better in school overall when their parents are involved, and this is particularly true for virtual schools. A recent study underscores the importance of a distance special education and support model that is centered on parents as the primary, home-based support. The findings include 90 percent of students reporting that they enjoyed the services in this model, and 92 percent of parent respondents calling the services very helpful. A parent’s relationship with the provider supports goal setting, positive sessions, and progress outside of them.

Tami Radzai, CCC-SLP, who has served students online in North Carolina, Washington, and California, explains:

“Parents and caregivers play a critical role in teletherapy sessions,” she says. “When parents are engaged, that’s when the true magic happens; they hear the strategies we’re using, what prompts we’re using, and what language we’re modeling—then they can use that in everyday interactions with their child to make important gains.”

2. Online Service Expertise

A key to successful virtual delivery is using therapists with specific training and experience in remote therapy services. Delivering an effective online therapy experience requires not only that the therapist to be fully licensed in the field, but also that they are adept in translating their skills from an in-person to a virtual environment. Connecting through a virtual modality requires differentiated strategies for engaging and motivating students, and it’s a unique form of expertise.

“We’ve been using virtual therapy services for some time now and having teletherapists who are experienced in the online delivery of therapy is the key to success. They are experts in making our students’ online sessions joyful and engaging,” said Jill Daniels, director of special education for the Idaho Home Learning Academy in the Oneida School District.

3. The Right Technology

Technology can be a really powerful tool in special education. It can help simplify providers’ workflow and help them to serve more students. It can help reinforce and personalize skill development for each child. And it can help schools shift quickly to a remote or hybrid model and fill critical gaps in their in-person delivery mode. But understanding the difference between “therapy delivered over videoconferencing” versus a teletherapy platform is essential in success for online special education services. The right technology has to be built from the ground up for providers to serve students.

Kimbra Kern, MA, CCC-SLP, who practices online in Missouri, recommends that “school districts have the right online therapy platform.”

Engaging activities, interactive features, therapist resources and guides, and the ability to control student views and actions all serve to keep a therapy session on track and driving outcomes. There is an important place for virtual schools in modern special education. With the right resources and expertise in place there is opportunity to truly personalize the student experience to ensure it is the best it can be for each child.