On moving in the right direction

A cultural shift in the way we think about learning disabilities

Fence at top or ambulance at bottom? Photo by Elena Mozhvilo on Unsplash

I’ve been writing for a while now on the sad state of affairs for students with a disability. In Australia, we have a system called the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (NCCD), which determines funding for each student based on the level of support needed. This may not have been the original intention, but I think initially, schools read this to mean more differentiation documentation = more funding.

Differentiation for a number of years was interpreted as alternative work, or scaffolds for some, rather than all or most. Explicit whole-class teaching, in other words, excellent Tier 1 instruction, was a thing of the future. Not so much any more, although it’s still not uncommon for personalised learning plans to call for individual students to receive step-by-step instructions, worked examples and chunked content, as if the rest of the class should just be expected to founder along.

I came across this very simple post on BlueSky¹ advocating for high expectations and appropriate support for students with a disability, and the sentiment seems to finally be shifting to the consensus that we address student learning disability rather than simply accommodate it. The post is from the US, but I think the tide is turning here too.

The key difference compared to what has passed as acceptable before now is that more and more educators believe students should be able to access grade level content, not some alternative worksheet where they colour in instead of write, à la UDL. It’s no longer acceptable to simply accommodate non-readers by assigning them an adult human reader in place of being taught to read.

Several years ago, I remember coming up against problems because I had assigned a summative reading assessment in Year 8 English. A significant number of students were assigned an adult human reader and I questioned whether I could call this a reading assessment if the students were not actually reading and responding. This was dismissed in the name of NCCD and the students were accommodated, a report being sent home to say they had passed the “reading” assessment. Accommodation neatly swept disability under the rug.

A conversation five years later with a colleague shows things have changed in that particular school. Recently, when again, a significant chunk of the grade supposedly needed accommodations because they could not read independently, demands were made instead. That same conversation about accommodations was responded to with incredulity — Why is it that an unacceptably large proportion of the grade in a wealthy suburb can’t read, my colleague asked.

The collective acceptance that this was ok had evaporated. Sidenote: it helped that the colleague has completed the SOLAR reading lab course! Now, we have the concept of instructional casualties. We know from the science of reading that there are very few students who can’t be taught to read. Now, it’s the school’s problem to solve, not sidestep — and as it should be.

Where to next? We have some persistent problems to deal with. Geoff Masters’ ‘age not stage’ proposal seems to have quietly slunk away and died, but perhaps more due to its impracticality. We still have approaches like UDL which attempt to gloss over the gaps in a student’s learning by providing alternative modes, but thankfully it seems to have mostly taken hold in universities, where if you can’t read, it’s not likely that anyone is going to provide Tier 2 or 3 intervention anyway. (But it does raise questions about how a student got that far! Another post, perhaps).

In New South Wales, one in seven students receive examination provisions, to the point where there will now be an inquiry. Similarly, autism diagnoses have skyrocketed since it was included in the National Disability Insurance Scheme, whereas ADHD is not. Are parents seeking advantage for their children, or is it because great Tier 1 instruction and appropriate interventions are still lacking? Some disabilities require genuine and serious adjustment, like blindness, which is usually permanent. Others require great instruction — and it’s no coincidence that a lot of explicit instruction derives from research into teaching students with additional needs.

Differentiation and assessment provisions still create a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, where teacher time and support resources are diverted away from intervention and plain old great teaching. Accommodation is one of the most labour intensive and expensive supports that schools could provide, consuming untold man (or woman)-hours that must pale in comparison to training teachers in the science of reading, explicit teaching or delivering intervention packages.

What’s needed is a collective shift in thinking. Opportunity cost calculations need to be conducted — not just now but continually — to ensure we are allocating appropriate resources to addressing rather than accommodating disability. Schools and teachers have finite time and finite professional learning budgets. They will inevitably be spent, but on what? That’s the question.

Once we reframe students with a disability as having a right to grade level knowledge and skills, there’s no going back to the old ways of parking them in a corner with a bunch of coloured pencils and a full-time, grown adult aide permanently at their side.

1. H/T Mel Henry