Efforts to Improve Instruction for One and All: Policy Reforms in Special Education

education policy;policy design;special education;general education;Education;Social Sciences;Educational Studies

O'Neill, MichaelaPeurach, Donald Joseph ;

University of Michigan

关键词: education policy;    policy design;    special education;    general education;    Education;    Social Sciences;    Educational Studies;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/138560/mkoneill_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

There have been significant achievements in the improvement of educational opportunities for students with disabilities over the last four decades. Nevertheless, concerns about the quality of special education persist and abound. How students are identified, the overidentification of poor and minority students, levels of inclusion, and disagreements about what constitutes appropriate instruction are long-standing issues in the field of special education. Today, we expect schools to support all students in meeting the same rigorous standards while also attending to the individual needs of students. This three-article dissertation explores two federal special education policy instruments that have helped to shape these expectations for schools and have also tried to provide a means by which schools might achieve these aims.In telling the story of these two policy instruments, the Individualized Education Program (IEP) and Response to Intervention (RTI), as well as the story of one state’s efforts to craft a statewide RTI policy, this dissertation illustrates a case of problem solving in which policymakers tried to address fundamental social problems while also contending with the consequences of past efforts. In the stories of the IEP nationally and Tennessee’s version of RTI, policymakers sought to manage the collision of ambitious aims and weak capabilities that were features of the environment in which these policy instruments were designed and that affected the solutions policymakers put forth. Both the IEP and Tennessee’s RTI reflected and tried to manage critical features of the environment in which they were produced. Most notably, this environment was defined by legal and structural features designed to limit the centralized control and power of government, a limited knowledge and practice base for educating all students, and strong ideological and philosophical beliefs about the equalizing effects of education and the responsibilities of schools. These features of the environment were reflected in the designs of the IEP and Tennessee’s RTI as policymakers attempted to support schools and districts in meeting their ambitious aims while having little leverage with which to do so.In trying to understand how policymakers managed this collision between ambitious aims and weak capability, this dissertation draws on the work of Cohen and Moffitt (2009), who argue that a gap exists between policy and practice that can be managed with four types of actions and resources: aims, instruments, capability, and the environment. In using this analytic frame, I illustrate the ways in which central features of the environment shaped these special education reform efforts and how policymakers, in turn, endeavored to manage the policy-practice gap that they created. Their efforts came in the form of 1) procedures (found in both the IEP and Tennessee’s RTI) and broad guiding principles, 2) a range of other instruments to support implementation, and 3) a process of designing and redesigning as policies are put into practice.