Creeping Normality: Special Education’s Problem of a New Normal

Changing Philosophies and Concepts

Among the things we believe contribute to a new normal in special education is the idea that enlightenment science or the scientific method is no better at establishing facts and realities than alternative ways of knowing (e.g., Baglieri et al., 2011). We cite Baglieri et al. (2011) often to illustrate the coming together of ideas about special and general education; we could include many other citations but choose not to do so to keep our reference list reasonably short.

Several philosophies threaten the very foundations of special education (Anastasiou & Kauffman, 2011, 2013). These philosophies or ideas have been known variously as postmodernism, constructivism, and other words signaling a form of relativism (e.g., (Kauffman, 1999; Kauffman & Sasso, 2006; Sasso, 2001, 2007). The idea of all the various forms of alternative philosophies is to deny that science or the scientific method is a more advantageous way of acquiring and advancing knowledge. Thus, various personal or “lived” experiences or assertions may be used to establish alternative facts that are assumed to have as much merit as modern or scientific inquiry. We are concerned that the new normal will entail special education’s abandoning its reliance on reliable scientific evidence as the basis for claims of the effectiveness of its practices.

Also, the nature of disability is a hotly contested issue and includes the idea that disability is only a social construction, just like any other diversity (Baglieri et al., 2011). One point of view is that disabilities are not things we should lament or try to prevent. This point of view is usually associated with the neurodiversity and disability studies movements, both of which encourage positive perceptions of both disabilities and people with them. Sometimes disabilities have been described as gifts for which people should be happy—for themselves, if they have a disability, and for others who have disabilities if they don’t have one themselves.

Certainly, unfair, discriminatory treatment of individuals should be avoided, and individuals with disabilities must be seen as valued members of society and be given every opportunity to succeed (Kauffman, 2020; Kauffman & Badar, 2018, 2020). However, in our opinion, failure to discriminate among differences—to see how disabilities are different from other forms of diversity and demand responses that other diversities do not—is something likely to lead to a dystopian society (Kauffman, 2020, 2022).

At least one prominent advocate of the disability studies approach has called for the elimination of special education (e.g., Oliver, 2000; Slee, 2019; see also Baglieri et al., 2011). Special education has come to be viewed by some as a derogation. The fact that African American students are disproportionately over-identified compared to Caucasian students in some categories of special education, especially in the higher incidence disabilities, is undeniable. However, a topic for research is the cause(s) and meaning(s) of the disproportionality that is obvious in the raw data of numbers of individuals of given ethnicity in various special education categories. The best scientific evidence available today suggests that, when all data are analyzed appropriately, African American students are, if anything, under-identified as needing special education (Anastasiou & Kauffman, 2019; Kauffman & Anastasiou, 2019; Morgan et al., 2017). Two important factors suggest why this might be true and why disproportionality is often said to be the denigration of African American students.

First, the perception of special education—whether it is on balance advantageous or disadvantageous for students receiving it—is important in how disproportionality is viewed. The United States has a long history of enslavement and unfair, derogatory treatment of African Americans, including schools’ racial segregation. This has been accompanied by White privilege, White supremacy, and claims of White superiority. African Americans are, therefore, rightly suspicious of further mistreatment in public education and attempts to derogate, separate, and otherwise abuse students of color. If special education is a disservice, then certainly disproportional over-representation and any misidentification should be condemned, even if provided under the guise of help. However, if special education is thought to be the more helpful than hurtful service that it often is (and always should be), then disproportional over-representation is not objectionable but underidentification and underservice are. Kauffman and Anastasiou (2019) and Anastasiou and Kauffman (2019) have suggested that, contrary to the obvious over-representation based on raw data, African American (and, in some instances, other children of color) may well often be denied services they need. In fact, under-identification and under-service better fit the pattern of mistreatment (by failing to provide expensive, helpful, personnel-intensive services) of African Americans.

Second, the non-school risk factors for the disabilities in question (e.g., low family income, poor health care, parental unemployment, dangerous neighborhoods, lack of a variety of social services and opportunities) are disproportionately experienced by African Americans. The typical power structures in American society have no objection to denial of advantageous services to African Americans, especially if they can do so while claiming to be interested only in achieving racial or ethnic parity. If they can deny something costly and advantageous by claiming to be advancing social justice or equity (in the instant case, avoiding special education), then they are happy to do so. Of course, in the case of special education, community power structures see an advantage in arguing that special education is ineffective, a waste of resources, a dead end, not needed, and discriminatory. If they can succeed in painting such a picture of special education, then their reducing the use of it, especially in the case of children of color, will be championed.

The issue of disproportionality is contentious, and the best way forward is unclear. Our concern is that the new normal may include further injustice based on students’ color and misperceptions of special education and students’ needs (Anastasiou & Kauffman, 2019; Kauffman & Anastasiou, 2019). In fact, the very idea of the normal child, or perhaps the idea of normal anything, has been called a myth, and the notion of labeling children as special in any way has been thought to preclude truly inclusive education (cf. Baglieri et al., 2011; Slee, 2018).

Changing Labels and Models

Anti-labeling rhetoric has long been a theme in criticism of special education and calls for its radical reform into something that can be labeled inclusionary (e.g., Reynolds, 1974). Broadsides against labeling students in any way is common in disability studies, apparently under the assumption that any label prevents equity:

If we are to interrogate equity issues among all schoolchildren and youth, it is useful to shift the focus away from students with disabilities to consider the normative student for whom public schools are designated—the mythical normal child . . . English language learner emphasizes the normalcy that awaits an “ELL” just as soon as he or she masters the dominant language. “At risk” children need to be thankful for “at risk” teachers assigned to change the course of their educational fates. This kind of labeling implies the presence of a standard according to which “diverse” and “different” children are gauged: however, it is within special education that cognitive and biological ideologies of normalcy and abnormalcy are codified and exercised—even championed for relentless methods of identifying pathology with schoolchildren in order to deliver “appropriate services.” (Baglieri et al., 2011, p. 2129)

One assumption about labeling seems to be that less specific, more general labels help to disguise differences, whereas more specific labels accentuate differences. Common suggestions supported only by fantasies include refusing to say what something is, pretending that we can serve students with disabilities without identifying them, or supposing that we can identify them without saying exactly what it is that distinguishes their educational need from others. The danger here is that in special education’s new normal there may be resistance not just to saying what the disability is (other than a difference or diversity, which applies to everyone) but also resistance or refusal to say what special education the child needs. Kauffman et al. (2008) noted that in disciplines other than special education, greater specificity in labels is associated with professional advancement. We think that is likely to be the case in special education as well.

Some have implored special educators to avoid labels carrying negative connotations or stigma. Various changes of words have been made, only to find that stigma attaches to whatever word is used to denote a poorly understood condition and that better understanding is a key to lowering stigma regardless of the word used. Furthermore, some conditions, actions, differences, and events are necessarily seen as undesirable in any humane society (Kauffman & Badar, 2013, 2018). The danger we see is a new normal expectation that we can avoid problems or obfuscate unfortunate conditions by talking of them in a code that obscures rather than confronts difficulties. The danger is using words that mean something they do not mean or that refer to something everyone has (e.g., challenges, diversities), thus suggesting avoidance of recognizing and labeling something not shared by everyone.

Finally, we note that critiques like those of Baglieri et al. (2011) offer no alternative to saying the words that indicate the differences that characterize individuals. We do not think substantive equity can be achieved without the labels that indicate observed differences. Failure to label disabilities surely can be claimed as ideological success, but it is an ideology that promotes the derogation and abandonment of special education.

Changing Calls for Inclusion

Calls for efforts to include more students with disabilities in general education classrooms (a practice at first called mainstreaming, later inclusion) began even as the federal law now known as IDEA was enacted in the 1970s (Martin, 1974). Merging general and special education became more common in the decades of the 1980s and 1990s (e.g., Goodlad & Lovitt, 1993; Stainback & Stainback, 1984). These ideas became known as the regular education initiative or REI (see Lloyd et al., 1991). The REI has largely been interpreted to mean the merging of special and general education into one system.

Many of the papers usually associated with the REI movement did not explicitly call for the elimination of special education (e.g., Reynolds et al., 1987; Wang et al., 1986). They criticized separate settings for students with disabilities as “driven by the fallacy that poor school adjustment and performance are attributable solely to characteristics of the student rather than to the quality of the learning environment” (Wang et al., 1986, p. 26, italics added). In contending this, it is arguable that they were setting up a strawman by exaggerating the position of the majority of the special education community, which usually advocated the full continuum of alternative placements mandated by law, ranging from full-time placement in general education classes to full-time placement in special education settings. Many students with disabilities, probably the majority, were being placed in a hybrid arrangement of part-time in each, general and special education.

In short, the REI set in motion or further strengthened a creeping normality related to placement of students with disabilities in general education. It emphasized the role of general educators in providing special education and strengthened skepticism about or rejection of placement alternatives, such that general education became accepted as the normal placement for many more students with disabilities. General education became the default placement, in part because of language used in the reauthorization of IDEA.

Undoubtedly, the most notable aspect of the amendments to the 1997 reauthorization of IDEA was the emphasis on access to the general education curriculum for students identified for special education. The amendments included a statement that each student’s individual education program (IEP) must include the ways in which he or she would be involved in the general curriculum, including goals related to meeting the child’s needs so that the child can progress in the general curriculum. Unfortunately, the amendments have often been misinterpreted to mean that the special education student must literally follow the general education curriculum. For example, a policy paper by the Council of Chief State School Officers (2019) has asserted “that every student with a disability is, first and foremost, a general education student” (p. 3).

The 1997 amendments to IDEA are clear in their meaning that the IEP needs to spell out how students will be assisted to access the regular education curriculum to the extent appropriate, even if they are taught skills that are not concomitant with their chronological age (Yell, Crockett, et al., 2017). Placement in an environment other than general education was portrayed as inherently less desirable than general education placement.

The creeping normality of the 1997 amendments provided legal support for the notion that both the general education environment and its curriculum were or could be made best for all students with disabilities, regardless of any disability. The amendments led some educators to believe that, normally, any child with any disability should not only be placed in a general education class but should study in some way the general education curriculum. The press for full inclusion and diminution or elimination of special education has become an international phenomenon (Anastasiou, et al., 2018, 2020; Kauffman et al., 2021). The idea of inclusion has been pushed to such an extreme that it is in danger of becoming its own worst enemy (Kauffman, Anastasiou, et al., 2020).

Changing Structure, Curriculum, and Instruction

In the late 20th century, merging general and special education or restructuring them (or, at least, the relationship between them) became a cause. The cause has current life, but in the 1990s first attracted strong and prominent advocates (e.g., Goodlad & Lovitt, 1993; Lipsky & Gartner, 1996). Sometimes, restructuring was part of the appeal of the REI (Lloyd et al., 1991). Kauffman and Hallahan (1993) pointed out that proposals to merge or restructure special and general education would inevitably reduce special education’s visibility, authority, and viability within the organization of public education. Goodlad (1990) had earlier argued that teacher education was not viable if it were merged with general higher education. Kauffman and Hallahan, in their chapter in Goodlad and Lovitt’s (1993) book, merely applied Goodlad’s earlier observations to the organizational issues of special education and general education. Our concern is that the new normal of restructuring may result in the downgrading of special education. It could be demoted to the level at which Goodlad (1990, p. 153) would call it an orphan program depending on charity and goodwill of others above it in the institutional hierarchy.

An apparent assumption underlying most or all proposals to merge special and general education or blur the lines between them (e.g., Fuchs et al., 2010) is that teachers in general education classrooms will use research-based instruction. The assumption seems to be that all children, including those needing special education will receive appropriate, effective instruction based on reliable empirical evidence. Scant evidence, if any, supports this assumption (Cook & Cook, 2020; Cooper et al., 2020; Fuchs et al., 2022). The new normal may include abandoning much or all of the special instruction of children with disabilities to the vagaries of general education.

For many students with disabilities, the general education curriculum is appropriate, if not essential. For some students with multiple, severe disabilities it is not only irrelevant, but time wasted trying to make it somehow appropriate and accessible (Kauffman, et al., 2020; Travers et al., 2020). Also, there is the matter of what access means. One notion is that it means simply that the general education curriculum must be part of whatever instruction a student receives. Thus, instruction in an alternative curriculum, even if that instruction is effective, is inappropriate. Another idea is that access means exposure—the opportunity to learn the curriculum because others in the same group of students are receiving the same instruction and are learning it. The research of Fuchs et al. (2010) strongly suggests that children with disabilities are unlikely to learn because they are included in a group of children who are learning the general education curriculum but, instead, require direct and explicit special instruction. That is, exposure does not assure access in the sense of learning. Our concern is that the “new normal” may see students with disabilities receiving instruction that is somehow said to be related to the general education curriculum but is not appropriate to the skills they need, and that students for whom the general education curriculum is appropriate may be included but not receive the instruction that will most effectively help them learn that curriculum.

The problem of ensuring that exceptional children receive the special instruction that is their primary need is compounded by the failure of some professional organizations and institutions to identify and condemn fads and scams that are not supported by reliable empirical evidence (e.g., facilitated communication by whatever name [e.g., rapid prompting, communication regulation partner], gentle teaching, sensory integration; see Foxx & Mulick, 2016; Travers et al., 2016).

A red herring argument often encountered in controversies about special education is that special education should be reconceptualized as a service, not a place. One reason this might be considered a red herring is that it was considered a service, not just a place, from the very beginning (cf., Bateman, 2007; Gerber, 2017). True, too many people considered placement, not instruction, the key but that has been true of both advocates of special classes and inclusion. The idea that special education just needs to happen in a different place, as has been advocated by some proponents of inclusion (Agran et al., 2020; Blackman, 1992) belies the idea that instructional service, not the place it occurs, is the key to special education’s value.

Perhaps one of the more untenable ideas is that place is a part of instruction. For example,

Arguments that emphasize quality of instruction while simultaneously de-emphasizing placement in relation to outcomes simply fail to recognize that place of instruction is part of instruction, and that context in and of itself matters with respect to outcomes for students with severe disabilities. (Agran et al., 2020)

This idea is, ironically, one for which proponents of inclusion have criticized special education delivered outside the general education classroom. It has often been used as the rationale for the red herring argument that special education must be reconceptualized as a service, not a place (it has historically been defined as a service, not a place). The assumption of some seems to be that any instruction outside the general education environment teaches undesirable things and that any instruction in the general education environment teaches things that are desirable.

Changing Comparisons

Some commentaries on special education seem to be anchored in a misunderstanding of the nature of disability and special education. For example, the President’s Commission on Excellence in Special Education (President’s Commission on Excellence in Special Education [PCESE], 2002) contained the apparent expectation that special education should restore normal functioning: “Sadly, few children placed in special education close the achievement gap to a point where they can read and learn like their peers” (p. 2). “The ultimate test of the value of special education is that, once identified, children close the achievement gap with their peers” (p. 3).

Without going into great detail here about the PCESE and responses to it, we note that it referred to closing gaps in achievement that simply can never be closed in any legitimate and humane way, misrepresented the issue of failure and its prevention, suggested that special education is based on an antiquated model of identification and intervention, and made questionable statements regarding referral of students with suspected disabilities (Kauffman, 2004; Kauffman & Wiley, 2004). It is not intellectually or conceptually coherent. For example, on page 3 the report states, “The current system uses an antiquated model . . .” and on page 8, “The current model . . . focuses on waiting for a child to fail, not on early intervention to prevent failure.” Yet, the report suggests no alternative model, nor does it suggest how errors are to be avoided in early identification or anticipation of failure. On page 26, the report reads, “In some studies, teachers refer more than 80 percent of the children who are placed in a high-incidence category.” This might be read as an indictment of teacher referrals because someone else should do it (we wonder who, if not teachers, should do most of the referring) or an indictment of teachers’ accuracy (we suspect because teachers’ judgments are too often confirmed, but it could also be because teachers are too often found to be in error). On page 68, the report condemns special education for segregating, labeling, and stigmatizing children and limiting their access to services.

The “damning with faint praise” of the PCESE seems obvious. “If special education is going to be devalued, then portraying it as an instrument of humiliation, disrespect, segregation, and degradation will serve your purpose very well indeed” (Kauffman & Wiley, 2004, p. 5).