Exceptional Children

The U.S. Department of Education 1984 Annual Report to Congress on progress in achieving the intent of P.L. 94-142 gives cause for thought and questions in the minds of local special education practitioners. Questions concern the extent to which there has been locally perceived progress in improving services to handicapped children, meaningfully characterizing that progress for critical audiences, and major initiatives yet to be addressed. In the opinion of the author, there have been both substantive and substantial improvements in local special education programs and services, in part attributable to the provisions in P.L. 94-142. Stability in local, state, and federal funding for programs and services remains a major area demanding attention.

The Sixth Annual Report to Congress on implementation of P.L. 94-142 is critically reviewed. The Annual Report fails to alert Congress that students who are difficult to teach and manage appear to be at significant risk of erroneous classification and inequitable treatment. This risk is due to the variability in identification and referral procedures across states and local districts, as seven years of national “child count” data indicate. These data were analyzed and interpreted to mean that school variability may reflect rational behavior by personnel faced with resource constraints and student diversity. Thus, attempts to fine tune current special education policy, especially for individuals classified as mildly handicapped, by “tightening” eligibility standards is both illogical and ill-advised. Implications for both policy and special education research are discussed.

This investigation compared the data contained in the Learning Potential Assessment Device (LPAD) report with the information contained in a standard psychological report (SPR) for its value in educational programming. Participants were 146 students in graduate special education courses at five mid-western universities who used a 24 item Likert-scale inventory. Independent variables considered were report type, teaching position, and years of teaching experience. Special educators rated both the SPR and LPAD reports the most negatively. Teachers with no experience, or in their first years of teaching, rated both reports the most highly, while those with 2–5 years’ experience rated the reports more negatively than did teachers with 6 or more years of experience. Neither report was perceived to be valuable for program planning purposes.

An 11-item, rank order values inventory was administered to 104 exceptional adolescents in five diagnostic categories and to 101 nonexceptional adolescents. Results indicate the two main groups have similar value hierarchies. Both ranked good education, freedom, family security, and true friendship among their top five values, and equality, exciting life, and sense of accomplishment least important. Similar value patterns also existed among exceptional students in different categories. Comparison of rankings to those from different, nonexceptional adolescent populations shows demographic factors may influence value patterns more than handicapping conditions. Exceptional and nonexceptional students did differ significantly on good education and freedom. Findings refute stereotypes of exceptional adolescents. Exceptional adolescents’ top ranking of good education is especially significant for educators.

A pilot study of the effects of the cognitive intervention program Instrumental Enrichment for hearing-impaired adolescents was conducted. Experimental and control groups were contrasted in regard to general cognitive functioning, problem-solving strategies, and reading comprehension. Experimental subjects were found to demonstrate improvement in: (a) systematic approaches to problems, (b) analysis of problem situations, (c) vocabulary size, (d) analysis of source-of-error in problem-solving situations, (e) completeness, organization, and planning in problem-solving situations, (f) peer cooperation in problem solving, (g) abstract thinking, (h) precision, and (i) development of multiple strategies to solve a problem. These results establish the efficacy and strong potential of systematic cognitive intervention programs for improvement of thinking skills in the hearing impaired adolescent. Additional and more comprehensive research is in process in order to examine these and other effects with larger groups under varying instructional conditions.

This article describes the application of a dynamic, or process assessment, model for children with reading problems. The purpose of the investigation was to evaluate individual differences in the number of learning trials needed by 36 children (mean age = 7.2) to reach criterion on training words during phonics instruction on two short vowels. Furthermore, the study investigated the extent to which such a process measure of learning rate during training was related to learning outcomes or products (i.e., retention and posttest performance). Findings are discussed in light of their implications for assessment and educational research or practice.

Since the Education for All Handicapped Children Act became effective in 1977, several aspects of the law have been subject to much litigation. One of the most controversial provisions of the law, in terms of litigation, is the related services mandate. The controversy centers on whether or not school systems are required to provide services such as psychotherapy, certain health services, physical plant accessibility, parent training and counseling, and extra-curricular activities. The author has examined how the courts have interpreted the related services mandate and has offered some guidelines as to what is and is not required.

Personal competence, or an individual's sense of mastery over the environment, is a primary motivator of human behavior. The special education enterprise thrives on the discovery of personal incompetence in children so this incompetence can be remediated. This article suggests that mainstreaming efforts have been largely unsuccessful because of the faulty assumptions underlying such efforts, the focus on academic attainment for handicapped children, and the failure to reasonably consider the social development of handicapped children. Self-efficacy theory is used as a basis to support the above argument, as a basis for the refocusing of the mainstreaming process, and as a basis for teaching positive social behaviors to mainstreamed handicapped children.