Highlights of

“No Child Left Behind & Special Education:

The View From Washington”

Dr. Robert Pasternack

Assistant Secretary for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services

U.S. Department of Education

April 3, 2003

In his speech on April 3, Dr. Pasternack addressed a variety of issues regarding people with disabilities, including President Bush’s New Freedom Initiative and various issues in special education. Below are highlights of his presentation.

Issues Facing Americans with Disabilities

1. 54 million adults in the United States, or 1 in 5, have a disability. The unemployment rate for people with disabilities is 70 percent and has been at that level for the last 12 years. Federal policy has not worked to create competitive, meaningful, integrated employment opportunities for people with disabilities.

2. Supplemental Security Income (SSI) is a federal income supplement program for the aged, blind, and disabled. Only 0.2 percent of people who have ever received SSI ever stop receiving it. The system encourages dependence and helplessness. It’s costly to society and must be changed.

3. Despite gains in special education, the dropout rate for kids with disabilities twice that of their non-disabled peers. Special education students need to complete high school in order to be able to go on to college.

4. Without a high school diploma, many young people end up in jail. 2.1 million people in the United States are incarcerated. We don’t know what percentage have disabilities. Some estimates are as high as 70 percent. A recent, more substantive study found that 36 percent of young people with disabilities are incarcerated, while only 12 percent of public school kids have disabilities. The rate of kids with disabilities who are incarcerated is triple that of kids with disabilities in the public schools. The criminal justice system is becoming a surrogate mental health system.

Opportunities for Change

Workforce demographics are changing. 50 percent of the federal workforce is eligible for retirement in the next 10 years. A huge percentage of teachers are eligible for retirement. As we go through these changes in workforce demographics, we have an incredible opportunity to integrate people with disabilities into the workforce. People with disabilities can accomplish great things if they are given the right support and opportunities. The Department of Education has a partnership with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that is asking hard questions of businesses; such as, what percentage of your workforce are people with disabilities? What are you doing to recruit people with disabilities, and to put them into competitive meaningful jobs?

The Five Goals of the New Freedom Initiative

In response to these and other issues facing Americans with disabilities, President Bush has proposed the New Freedom Initiative. The five goals of the new Freedom Initiative are as follows:

1. Reduce the high unemployment rate among people with disabilities. Get people with disabilities competitive, meaningful employment. Having a high school diploma gives them the opportunity to get competitive employment. They can be integrated into the workforce and be successful. Today, 350,000 people with disabilities who do work are in sheltered workshops, mostly doing non-meaningful work and making sub-minimum wage.

2. Increase the homeownership rates among adults with disabilities. Less than 10 percent of adults with disabilities in the United States own their own home compared to 67 percent of non-disabled adults. This is an incredible disparity. Homeownership is an important way through which people in this country accumulate wealth, and people with disabilities have not had the opportunity to accumulate wealth through homeownership.

3. Provide transportation for people with disabilities. If people with disabilities don’t have access to transportation, they can’t get to work, worship, vote, shop, or recreate. We don’t have mass transit in many parts of the country. This is a huge barrier to the full participation of people with disabilities in all aspects of society.

4. Provide access to assistive technology. For people with disabilities, access to assistive technology is very important. The National Institute on Disability Rehabilitation Research in the Department of Education has a budget of $110 million. Its mission is to fund programs that will impact the quality of life of people with disabilities, such as the IBOT (a new generation of wheelchair) and the Segway. This is an example of a public-private partnership that can improve the quality of life for people with disabilities.

5. Improve the mental health system. Less than 1 in 5 American kids who need mental health service are getting it. There is a tremendous stigma attached to mental illnesses. Psychiatric disability is one of the leading categories of disability.

Issues in Special Education and No Child Left Behind

The shortage of special education teachers

Right now, there is a critical shortage of special education personnel in the country. And it’s getting worse, because we’re losing some of the best and the brightest teachers, because they don’t want to teach special education. They didn’t go into special education to become lawyers, but special education has become more about protecting yourself from liability than about being an instructional leader.

According to Pasternack, The Department of Education just conducted a national study of 972 special education teachers to learn about why so many teachers in special education are leaving. They found there are three reasons. First, there’s too much paperwork and many times the paper work is not meaningful to education. The second issue is that there are too many meetings. And the third issue is a lack of administrative support.

Inappropriate placement of students in special education classes

There has been a 300 percent increase in funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in last five years. The federal government is giving out a lot of money. However, according to Pasternack, the problem is that we have the wrong kids in special education. Out of the 13 categories of eligibility for special education, the biggest category is “specific learning disability.” 52 percent of kids in special education are in this category. Learning disabilities are real, lifelong, and pervasive. But because we have used a flawed model to identify kids with learning disabilities, which requires people to document a mythical discrepancy between ability and achievement, we have a ton of kids in special education that shouldn’t be there. 80 to 90 percent of kids who are in learning disabled classes are there because they can’t read.

We have squandered huge amounts of kids who shouldn’t be in special education. We should be focused on needs of kids, regardless of how they are categorized. No matter what we do, in law, in regulation, in funding, we need highly qualified teachers using scientifically based instructional strategies. We need to give teachers coherent training.

No Child Left Behind and Special Education

No Child Left Behind is committed to measuring how well all students are learning. The legislation demands adequate yearly progress for all — even for children with disabilities. It requires disaggregation of test scores by race and disability, in order to ensure that students are making adequate yearly progress. It also requires a change in the focus of assessment so that it guides and informs instruction.