13 percent of Oregon public school kids in special ed

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http://www.katu.com/education/story.asp?ID=83428 13 percent of Oregon public school kids in special ed TOOLS Email this story to a friend Printer-friendly VersionBy JULIA SILVERMANAP Education Writer PORTLAND, Ore. - About 13 percent of Oregon schoolchildren are in special education programs, according to data released Wednesday by the state Department of Education, putting the state's totals just slightly above the estimated national average of 12 percent. The

state had 71,649 special ed students attending public schools in 2005, a slight increase from 2004's total of 71,401. The release comes at a time when schools face increasing pressure to comply with federal education laws by bringing special education students up to grade level in core academic subjects. Last year, 312 of the 388 Oregon schools that were publicly identified as "needing improvement" were so listed because special education students didn't meet grade-level performance targets on math or English tests. According to state officials, about 30,000 of Oregon's special education students fall under the broad category of "specific learning disabilities" - essentially, minimal brain dysfunction that nevertheless impacts a child's ability to read, write and do math, said Gene , a spokesman for the Oregon Department of Education. Children with dyslexia, or those with attention deficit disorder, can fall into this category, he said. Another 20,000 or so public school students are classified as having a speech or language impairment, according to the department's data. Of the remainder, about 5,600 are autistic, in keeping with Oregon's status as the state with one of the highest incidences of autism in the country. According to the Autism Society of Oregon, about one Oregonian in 1,000 has the neurological disorder, compared with a national average of one in 2,400. And each year, about 4,700 children enter school with emotional disturbances, according to the department's data. Most of those students remain in regular classrooms with their classmates, said, a custom known as "mainstreaming," that works off the theory that special education students must learn to cope with the world at large. Seventy percent of special education students in Oregon are mainstreamed; the rest spend at least a portion of their school day in a separate classroom, for more individualized instruction. Numbers of students identified for special education services have been steadily on the rise, in Oregon and nationally, for the last decade or so. But in six districts across the state - led by Tigard-Tualatin, and also including Sheridan, Ontario, Roseburg, Corvallis and Pendleton - the state is piloting a new program that could potentially lead to fewer identified students. It's called "response to intervention", and the idea is to flag possible candidates for special education early in their schools careers, and try to see if they respond to different methods of teaching English, math and other core subjects. If so, there would be no need to classify the students as needing special education programs; if not, students could be sent through formal special ed programs. Some special education parents have been concerned that such programs will result in students being overlooked, or not getting the services they need, said Robin Wortman, resource program director

for the Salem-based Parent Training and Information Center, which works with special education families. Others worry that once children are given special services to catch up to their classmates, they'll go back to being mainstreamed and overlooked, she said. But Latini, an assistant superintendent at the state education department, said the pilot program will make sure that "the right kids are in the right place." Previous methods of identifying children for inclusion into special education, "kind of put the blame on the kids' shoulders, without any question about the fault of instruction."

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