Youth, Education, and Marginality: Local and Global Expressions

Chapter 11: Does Special Education Marginalize Young People?: The Need for Evidence-Informed Practices

chapter 11 220 The OSSLT is a Grade 10 high-stakes literacy test that measures both reading and writing skills. It is also used as a graduation requirement for all Ontario high school students. Between 2001 and 2006, success rates moved from 75% to 84%. Since, 2006, success rates have flatlined at 84%, with the 2010 results coming in at 83% (see Education Quality and Accountability Office, 2011). Special education students make up between 12-14% of high school populations (Bennett & Wynne, 2006). Over half of this group have learning disabilities and/or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). They have the intellectual competency to succeed, but they experience cognitive processing difficulties that undermine their ability to learn and perform based on conventional teaching and evaluation approaches. And for those who do graduate from high school, the possibility of post-secondary education is small. According to US data, high school students with learning disabilities enter post-secondary education at half the rate of their peer group. The percentage is believed to be even more negatively significant for students with ADHD (Gregg, 2009). Canadian rates are similar. Data from the Toronto District School Board shows that for students with learning disabilities, who do graduate from high school, only 31% pursue post-secondary education (Brown & Parekh, 2010.) This finding has lifelong implications for this cohort both in employment and quality of life. Governments are rethinking successful educational outcomes beyond high school and into post-secondary institutions (Rich, 2010). Today, high school education is seen as only a transitional step and not the final stage towards participation in society. As the research shows, both the rates of employment and salaries increase with the number of years completed in post-secondary education (Curry & Stabile, 2004). In the United States, the federal agency responsible for education is now looking at 100% graduation rates for secondary education. As governments across Canada adjust their educational goals and expectations for high school, there is a good possibility that students with special needs will be excluded. Special Education in High Schools In the field of learning disabilities and ADHD, the goal has always been early identification and intervention (Gregg, 2009). Appropriate interventions and instructional practices can help students with specific learning difficulties show significant improvement (Kavale, 2005), but other learning problems may persist or begin to manifest themselves in high school, especially as the school demands change. Interventions that may have worked in elementary school can be non-productive or even iatrogenic in the high school context. More and more, evidence is suggesting that greater emphasis on compensatory strategies , and less on interventions, may make sense in high school (Gregg, 2009). Does Special Education Marginalize Young People? 221 Compensatory strategies, which include accommodations, assistive technologies , and emphasis on learning strategies, have been shown to work with postsecondary students, and they make sense for high school settings. Yet, many high schools model their special education programs on elementary school models. Emphasis is placed on aggressive attempts to remediate core skill deficits rather than compensating for them. The consequence is usually having students fall further behind in accessing the academic curriculum, which is followed by an eventual transfer into non-academic subjects. This process, in turn, shuts out students with learning disabilities and/or ADHD from pursing university-based courses. Often, it also leads to disengagement from learning and finally dropping out altogether. Tilleczek and Clarke (2013) have shown that the youth who leave school early and also have a diagnosed special need find that the transition into high school often creates real gaps and problems. If they had been well cared for in elementary school, they felt angry and dismayed at the high school gaps. If they had poor care in elementary schools, high schools did much better and provided their first assistance—they felt it was too little too late but were pleased to have any assistance. Another area of concern is the separation of special education departments from other subject area departments in most high schools. Special education departments generally offer two services. First, they offer training in study and learning strategies. These strategy programs are usually restricted to students in special education. They are not offered across the school community to all students. More importantly, these skills are taught as decontextualized from actual subject areas. Strategy training that is not connected to the expectations of a specific subject area tends not to be retained, and students who...