1) The percentage of students identified has leveled off in the 2000s.

2) I have a better theory. The increase in the 1980s and 90s came mostly in the category of learning disabled. These learning disabilities were “diagnosed” based on test scores. A low score on a reading test meant there was a “reading disability.”

There was never any proof that these “disabilities” were organically based. I submit that they were the result of early grade teachers doing a poor job of teaching reading. The increase that Forster and Greene describe lagged just behind the whole-language fad that swept across the country. As phonics have regained favor, the number of learning disabled students has stabilized. The special education industry, however, is not likely to dismantle the empire it has built any time soon.

I’m sure that we will agree at times and disagree at other times. I’m glad that this is an area where we are more in agreement than I had thought. Even when we disagree, I’ll strive to stick to the substantive issue.

I apologize if I was mistaken. I was indeed thinking only of the special ed. kids who are in the special ed. wing, and you’re absolutely right that many more are either in resource room or receiving far more limited services. My mistake.

Given your statistics, though, it still appears much more expensive to educate them.

If moving that 15% of special ed money into pre-identification services delivered to kids who may or may not later be identified results in those services actually being delivered, I say go for it.

I remember reading about kids getting stuffed into special ed programs for the budget manna at least ten years ago.

I suppose these sorts of abuses bear repetition since they remind the public that the public education system is staffed with human beings who are quite capable of acting in their own interest regardless of the consequences to others.

So, most special education students receive pull-out instruction for a small portion of the day. This is essentially the same thing schools often do for students who are behind academically but not identified as disabled — provide pull-out small group instruction to help them catch up. The financial benefit of doing that after identifying a student as disabled is that the school receives a subsidy for the expense they already were going to spend.

I not only argue, I also provide facts. NYC Educator should do the same when making an argument.

Jay Greene is dubious about Response To Intervention — trying to educate children well so they’re not diagnosed as learning disabled

As I read it, he is completely in favor of trying to educate children well so they’re not later misdiagnosed as learning disabled. Instead what he opposes is diverting some special ed funds away from special ed students and toward improving education for all students in the early grades. He argues that in any case, schools ought to be using the best practices in the early grades, and to the extent they’re not, it’s not because of lack of funding.