Council Of Exceptional Children

Bill Would Boost Federal Spending on Students with Disabilities

Late Thursday, Sen. Tom Harkin , D-Iowa, and 13 other senators introduced a bill that proposes the federal government fulfill a decades-old promise to pay 40 percent of the cost of educating students with disabilities, the Council for Exceptional Children 's Lindsay Jones tells me.

The proposal suggests the federal government would reach the 40 percent mark by 2021. For years, advocates of students with disabilities have pushed for the federal contribution towards the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act . The 40 percent marker was part of a pledge by Congress when that law was created in 1975. But current federal spending specifically for students with disabilities stands at about 16 percent.

So instead, school districts and states have picked up the bulk of the tab for educating students with disabilities. As those costs appear to keep rising, some states have requested permission to cut spending in recent years. With more federal money, the CEC says schools could increase the quality and range of services available to students with special needs, raise the salaries of teachers and staff who work with these students, and in the long run, improve their graduation rates.

Bills pledging full funding have been introduced before , but haven't gotten the traction they needed to pass. This bill proposes boosting the federal contribution from about $11.5 billion this year to $35.3 billion by 2021, primarily through the doubling of taxes on cigarettes and small cigars.

Whether Congress, which is in a bind over raising the debt ceiling , will act on the bill is a big question. All 13 of Sen. Harkin's co-sponsors are Democrats.

Stay tuned for more details and comments as they are available.

Research on Using Technology to Enhance the Writing Skills of ...

Volo, IL (PRWEB) January 15, 2009

Don Johnston announced the release of a new and independent study in the Journal of Special Education Technology (JSET), a division of the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC). The study "Use of software to improve writing skills of students with special needs," examines the impact of assistive technology on the writing skills of students with disabilities. This study compared student performance in writing using word prediction and talking tools word processing for their written work samples.

Jennifer Cullen, Dayton Ohio Public Schools, Stephen B. Richards and Catherine Lawless-Frank; University of Dayton, performed the study to measure the impact of assistive technology writing tools on 5th graders’ writing skills over a 7-week period at an urban elementary school. Don Johnston’s Co:Writer® word prediction program and Write:OutLoud® talking word processor were chosen as the writing accommodations to support students during their daily district-mandated writing activities. The study demonstrated that the technology helped students improve their writing outcomes in four key measures: writing rubric scores, accuracy, spelling and number of words written.

The complete research study is available in the October 2008 JSET Issue, Volume 23(2), pg. 33-43. The online summary is: http://www.donjohnston.com/products/cowriter/research.html

Ben Johnston, Director at Don Johnston, said, “A high percent (65%) of students referred for learning disabilities have a writing disability. (Mayes, Calhoun, Crowell, 2000). Many of these students have physical, cognitive, or learning differences and can’t reach their potential with conventional writing tools. This study demonstrates that students can thrive in the right environment provided they have the right tools. Over 20% of school districts use Co:Writer and Write:OutLoud as accommodations to support students who struggle in writing. We are pleased that more research is being done to match students to the right learning environment where they can excel."

In 2006, JSET published another study on "The impact of software on the prediction of output words written for students with physical disabilities", Volume 21, No. 3, prepared by Pat Mirenda and Kirsten Turoldo at the University of British Columbia and Constance McAvoy, Special Education Technology-British Columbia (SET-BC) Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. This research examined the impact of the Co: Writer on the written production of 24 students with physical disabilities. The study included surveys from students, teachers and adults after observing ten-minute writing samples in three modalities: handwriting, word processing, and word processing with Co:Writer. Two-thirds of students and over half of the adults believed that Co:Writer helped students spell better; use a wider variety of words; write faster; produce neater, easier-to-read work; and write more correct sentences. Another two-thirds believed that Co:Writer helped students write more with less fatigue and frustration and read what they had written. This research concluded that using word processing and Co:Writer together resulted in higher percentages of legible words, correctly spelled words, correct word sequences; and longer lengths of consecutive sentence sequences than by writing by hand alone.

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