Designing a Stronger System for Special Education With Lessons From the Pandemic

• In Event: Educating in an Epidemic: The K–12 Response to COVID-19

Abstract

As school buildings closed this spring, educators across the country struggled and too often failed to ensure students’ right to a free and appropriate education. For instance, one survey found that only 64 and 54 percent of parents who had children receiving services specified by an IEP or 504, respectively, in February reported that their children were still receiving those services in April (Understanding Coronavirus in America Tracking Survey, 2020)This breakdown in special education was not solely a function of the sudden and likely temporary shift to fully remote learning but instead revealed and amplified long-standing vulnerabilities that undermine the education of students with disabilities.

Next fall, students with disabilities are likely to return significantly behind academically and many will be emotionally and socially vulnerable. Schools will need to develop strategies to address these acute needs. At the same time, the pandemic shined a bright light on long-running systemic issues in how schools deliver a free and appropriate education to students with disabilities. Recovery must be about more than restoring lost learning time. It must be about rebuilding the system to be more effective, robust, and adaptable. 

Last spring, we conducted a series of five short case studies describing schools’ efforts to prioritize and educate students with disabilities as they navigated the school-building closures. These cases show how systems and structures that were in place prior to the pandemic made it possible for these schools to continue to live out the principles that support a strong special education program. Specifically, these schools relied on 1) trusting relationships among teachers and between teachers and parents, 2) an orientation toward ongoing problem solving to meet individual needs, and 3) systems and practices that blurred lines between special and general education to design a remote learning program that met the needs of students with disabilities. Though each school described individual practices and continued challenges, the success and struggle seen in these schools have important lessons for how to prepare educators and design schools and systems to better educate and support students with disabilities as schools continue to navigate the present crisis and as our school systems move beyond it.

This fall we expanded this research to include 18 detailed case studies of charter and district schools’ efforts to re-envision special education amidst the pandemic and to explore the implications these changes have for the future of special education. The goal of this work is to inform the field about different strategies, practices, and school models implemented during the COVID-19 crisis that may better support education for students with disabilities in the long-term, regardless of instructional mode.

Authors

• Lanya McKittrick, University of Washington

• Sivan Tuchman, University of Arkansas at Fayetteville

• Betheny Gross, University of Washington