UNITED STATE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

PRESIDENT\'S COMMISSION ON

EXCELLENCE IN SPECIAL EDUCATION

\* \* \*

THE ROLE AND FUNCTION OF THE

OFFICE OF SPECIAL EDUCATION PROGRAMS (OSEP)

IN THE IMPLEMENTATION OF SPECIAL EDUCATION

HEARING

Wyndham Hotel

1400 M Street, N.W.

Monticello Ballroom

Washington, D.C.

Friday, April 26, 2002

8:10 a.m.

The hearing was held pursuant to notice, on

Friday, April 26, 2002, at 8:10 a.m., Alan Coulter,

presiding.

ATTENDEES:

DR. ALICE D. PARKER, Assistant Superintendent and

Director of Special Education for the California

Department of Education

BARBARA GANTWERK, Director, New Jersey Department

of Education\'s Office of Special Education Programs

THOMAS HEHIR, Ed.D., Director, School Leadership

Program at Harvard Graduate School of Education.

PAULA GOLDBERG, Executive Director, Parent Advocacy

Coalition for Educational Rights Center (PACER),

Minneapolis, Minnesota

LESLIE SEID MARGOLIS, Managing Attorney, School

House Discipline Project, Maryland Disability Law

Center (MDLC)

RICHARD \"DICK\" D. KOMER, Senior Litigation Attorney,

Institute for Justice, Washington, D.C.

‑‑ continued ‑‑

ATTENDEES (CONTINUED):

DR. PHILIP J. BURKE, Professor and Chairman of the

Special Education Department at University of

Maryland

MARTIN GOULD, Senior Research Specialist, National

Council on Disability

P R O C E E D I N G S

(8:10 a.m.)

DR. COULTER: (Presiding) Good morning.

My name is Alan Coulter. I\'m a member of the

President\'s Commission on Excellence in Special

Education. Welcome to our hearing on the role of the

Office of Special Education Programs and its

functions in the implementation of special education.

The first thing that I need to say is

that, as you can see to my immediate right and your

left, we do have interpretive services available. We

have two interpreters here for people who are deaf.

I am the chair of the task force on the

Office of Special Education Programs Role and

Function, which is one of several task forces of the

President\'s Commission on Excellence in Special

Education. I want to welcome you to today\'s hearing.

The focus of our hearing is the implementation of

special education programs by the Office of Special

Education Programs within the U.S. Department of

Education. That office is commonly called OSEP, and

you will probably hear that term a number of times

throughout the day.

OSEP is the federal government\'s primary

entity for implementing the Individuals with

Disabilities Education Act. We must make sure that

this office is equipped to respond to the many

challenges we face. In doing so, we can help ensure

that no child is left behind.

Before we begin our hearing, I would like

to briefly provide you with background about the

Commission. President Bush established the

Commission last October to collect information and to

study issues related to federal, state and local

special education program. The Commission\'s goal is

to recommend policies to improve the educational

performance of students with disabilities so that no

child is left behind.

Our work is not designed to replace the

Congressional reauthorization of the Individuals with

Disabilities Education Act. Rather, the report we

produce and issue this summer will not only provide

vital input into the reauthorization process but also

into the national debate on how to best educate all

children.

The Commission\'s examination of OSEP is

part of its expansive review of all facets of special

education. Over the past two months, the Commission

and its task forces have held hearings in Houston,

Denver, Des Moines, Los Angeles, Coral Gables, New

York City, Nashville, San Diego and Washington.

The Commission has also looked at issues

such as teacher quality, accountability, funding cost

effectiveness, parental involvement, identification

of children with learning disabilities, research,

paperwork, litigation and now federal programs.

As part of today\'s hearing, the Commission

will hear a variety of perspectives on the role and

function of OSEP. For example, the Commission will

hear how states can partner with the federal

government to improve special education programs.

The Commission will also hear whether OSEP is

becoming more effective in its delivery of programs

and their implementation, whether OSEP is improving

special education through a focus on the consumers

who are families of children with disabilities, and

how federal leadership can help improve the

implementation of special education programs.

We will hear presentations from experts

and educators on these topics. We will also have a

public comment period this afternoon, and we will

attempt to learn all that we can from all these

sources in order to provide us with valuable input

that we need in order to develop our recommendations

for the President.

Thank you for your interest in the

Commission. We will now begin today\'s hearing. It\'s

important for me to also note that all of today\'s

hearing is being recorded and transcribed and becomes

a part of the record. So I need to remind everyone

that when they address the Commission, they need to

speak directly into the microphone. Hopefully I\'m

providing a good model to start out with, because

it\'s important for us to be sure that all that is

said is recorded and is made a part of the record.

We want to begin today with the testimony

of two witnesses on the topic of State and Federal

Partnerships to Improve Special Education. Our first

speaker is Dr. Alice D. Parker. Dr. Parker is the

Assistant Superintendent and Director of Special

Education for the California Department of Education.

Our second speaker today and the second

member of our first panel is Barbara Gantwerk. She

is the Director in New Jersey of the New Jersey

Department of Education\'s Office of Special Education

Programs.

Welcome Dr. Parker and Ms. Gantwerk. Dr.

Parker?

DR. PARKER: Thank you. Chairman

Branstad, Commission members, Committee chair member,

Dr. Coulter, and Executive Director Jones, I want to

thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

As Dr. Coulter introduced me, I am Alice

Parker and I\'m an Assistant Superintendent of Public

Instruction and the State Director of Special

Education for California. I\'m very pleased that we

have this opportunity to share some of our successes

and some of our challenges as we seek to provide

services to children with disabilities and their

families.

I\'ve been asked here today to talk about

our experiences in California with the Office of

Special Education Programs, OSEP, and to offer any

suggestions we in California may have to improve how

we and they all work together so that children with

disabilities and their families have the benefit of

the best that we all have to offer.

Specifically, I want to share with you our

experiences with monitoring and communication about

compliance issues, including the effectiveness of

special education conditions and special conditions

applied to California. And I want to make

recommendations about changes that we need to clarify

expectations, provide technical assistance and

achieve results.

Let me share up front that because of the

special conditions placed on California\'s IDEA

grants, we\'ve had a very close working relationship

with OSEP and OSEP staff over the last couple of

years. I find their staff to be committed,

professional and caring. I think that their

knowledge of IDEA requirements and their personal

integrity is beyond reproach. Any suggestions that I

make that my staff have made, we are making with a

clear intention to focus on the organization and not

on any of the individuals in that organization.

That said, I think a bit of levity might

help you understand the context in which we\'ve been

working in California. Now there are some folks on

the Hill there, if you can\'t see them, and two

cowboys, and there\'s someone in the middle that seems

to have arrows through them. And it says, now stay

calm. Let\'s hear what they said to Alice. And

sometimes after their visits, it was the guillotine

and whether I wanted paper or plastic. And this one

is for Alan from Bernie, one of my staff people,

because Dr. Coulter has provided technical assistance

in California, and we deeply appreciate it.

Then I said to Alan, you know, as long as

we\'re under siege, one of us ought to moon these cats

and dogs. And finally, this is pretty much how we

feel in California over the last several years.

We\'re sort of in the belly of the snake, and we\'re

not sure which way we want to come out.

So let me tell you a bit about myself. I

came to the California Department of Education from

the San Mateo Foster City Elementary School District

in November 1997. At that time, California had more

than 1,100 school districts. We were serving 640,000

students with disabilities. We used a monitoring

system that was based on procedural compliance. We

had a decreasing number of staff, only 16 doing on‑

site monitoring in California, and we had no data to

answer the question how effective is special

education in California?

With the advent of IDEA 97, it was very

clear we needed to have a major shift in direction

from a system that focused solely on the procedural

elements of IDEA to a system that placed emphasis on

access to and progress in the general education

curriculum. My staff used to roll their eyes when

I\'d talk about putting the E back into IDEA. They

don\'t roll their eyes anymore. We are about outcome.

We instituted a number of changes. First

‑‑ I\'m going to back. First we convened a group of

stakeholders, and we established clear goals and

indicators.

Next, we took stock of the data we already

had on hand to identify districts most in need of our

attention and assistance. Then we reengineered the

methods we were employing to work with districts to

assess their compliance with procedural guarantees,

to assess success in reaching statewide goals, and to

provide guidance, training and technical assistance.

Lastly, we implemented a new quality

assurance process, a process we believe that was data

informed, that integrated all of our monitoring

efforts under one umbrella, including local policy

and procedure review, complaints, due process,

monitoring reviews, review of student level and

district data. And we focused our technical

assistance and enforcement areas based on that

analysis.

In this process we gave particular

attention to our on‑site monitoring and technical

assistance. One thing that had become clear to us

was that the old way of doing business was not

working. It seems kind of silly to say this out

loud, but if you want other people to pay attention

to outcomes for children with disabilities, then you

as a state agency and as the federal government have

to pay attention to outcomes for children with

disabilities. And we found that we were only paying

attention to procedural guarantees.

Our analysis of IDEA 97 and the Rally

decision, for that matter, was that it called for a

more balanced approach to ensuring both procedural

guarantees and educational benefits for children.

In addition to the types of on‑site and

self‑review processes that most states use, we

instituted a pilot project to focus on those

districts whose key performance indicators were the

lowest 15 percent of districts of similar size and

type. And in this process, which also included a

review and correction and procedural guarantees,

district teams, including both regular and special

education staff and parents, went through a process

to examine their data, explore their practices and

implement changes focused on priority performance

areas.

Through our state improvement grant and

the generosity of the Schwab Foundation ‑‑ and I want

to take a second here to talk about how important

those two issues are. We had funding through a state

improvement grant and Larry Wexler from the Office of

Special Education Programs has been extraordinarily

helpful in giving us feedback and support through the

implementation of our SIG. Our Western Regional

Resource Center has been exemplary in their support.

They\'re funded through the Office of Special

Education Programs, and their technical assistance

has been stunning.

And then you can\'t ever forget about the

one person who happens to be in this room and I\'m

glad, who has provided technical assistance through

documents, presentations, training, that we all

jokingly say at the National Association of Special

Ed Directors, that there\'s only three women in the

world that you know by their first name. There\'s

Cher, there\'s Madonna, and there\'s JoLeta. And

without her support and wonderful technical

assistance, we all would be in a lot of trouble. And

so, thanks, JoLeta.

Anyway, through our SIG and the generosity

of the Schwab Foundation, we have also been

identifying and assembling districts with exemplary

practices. These two groups, the ones who have the

most difficulty and the ones who have exemplary

practices, have been joined with our SIG dollars

through biennial conferences into a kind of ongoing

technical assistance group that has produced

tremendous gains for all of the districts in both

procedural guarantees and educational outcome.

We have found that it is critical that all

of the components are aligned: Monitoring, technical

assistance, training, the state implementation

grants, and that all of the stakeholders, and

especially our parents, are involved in each aspect

of that which we do and are clear on the alignment,

and our efforts have resulted in several statewide

improvements.

The number of overdue annual IEP reviews

and three‑year reevaluations has declined

dramatically, dropping by 65 and 68 percent

respectively.

The percent of overdue annual IEP review

and three‑year reevaluations has declined

dramatically, dropping by 8.4 and 4.6 percent,

respectively.

The percent of students scoring at or

above the 50th percentile in math has increased

steadily each year for both general ed and special

education students, and the gap between the two

groups has decreased only one point.

The percent of students scoring at or

above the 50th percentile has increased steadily each

year for both general education and special education

students. The gap between the two groups has

decreased by four points.

And the percent of students receiving

special education and educated with their non‑

disabled peers, 80 percent or more of the time has

increased steadily. We have set goals and benchmarks

for these areas, and things are improving. We still

have a long way to go.

National data strengthens these findings.

In the last 10 years, California\'s special education

population has grown faster than the national

average, and I have a graphic for you that was

provided through the Office of Special Education

Programs data review and recently given to data folk

from all the states in the United States.

I\'m showing you the seven biggest states

in the United States, and I want to say right now

about data that it\'s really important to understand

that Florida, Texas, New York, California, Illinois,

Ohio and Pennsylvania all have different data field

definitions for each piece of data they provide. So

it\'s important to look at data across time for each

state to look for improvement, and the issue of rank

ordering, unless data have common data definition, is

very difficult.

So in the last ten years, we\'ve grown. We

are now one‑tenth of the population in the United

States. And as of our December 1 count this year, we

have 660,242 students in special education in

California.

California has reduced the number of

students served in separate facilities. We have

really made an effort in the area of LRE, and we\'ve

increased the number of students who spend more time

in regular classrooms. We need to do a better job.

California has the largest special

education caseloads of any of the large states in the

country. Despite the huge class sizes and the

elimination of differential standards, California has

made dramatic increases in the percent of students

with disabilities graduating with a diploma.

And California has reduced the dropout

rate of students with disabilities by almost one‑

third since 1993‑94, almost half of the rate of the

United States as a whole.

Now you might be thinking, she\'s lost her

marbles, she\'s off the topic. She\'s only tooting her

own horn, but here\'s the point. In order for OSEP to

complete the change in its focus and oversight

approach to a more result‑based focus, it may have

to, as my friend Bill East has put it, just get on

with it, and let some of the old stuff go.

Let me be more specific. I have a chart

for you all to take a look at at a later time, but

you will see that the chart, which was prepared by

one of my staff members, depicts general supervision

events over the last several years. And you can see

that it is rich, and this is an intended pun, with

the Whitewater of change.

As you can also see, we have been working

on corrective action plans for many years, as far

back as 1992. We have had special conditions on our

Part B grants for the last three years. We\'ve had a

state implementation grant since 1999. Staff of OSEP

have spent a week or so in our offices and in local

school districts throughout our state one to three

times per year for the last four years.

And we have prepared two to four reports

of substantial length on our activities and the

activities of 10 to 25 school districts each year.

Now the special conditions are very

difficult to understand, and OSEP\'s involvement in

California has been met with mixed reviews.

Interaction with OSEP staff, OSEP technical

assistance materials, as I have said, and OSEP‑

sponsored technical assistance events have been

lauded. People love that work.

The overall result of their efforts,

however, are seen as focusing our attention back on

the nonsubstantial procedural details of compliance

and not a balance of procedural guarantees and

educational results. In thinking about this, I think

there are several things that have contributed to

this. And I\'d like to tell you a bit about what we

think may be happening. We wonder if we\'re making an

impact. And we wonder if we\'re going to be allowed

to think outside the box. Sometimes it\'s not a good

idea.

So here are my recommendations. There

needs to be emphasis on procedural details. I\'m

going to skip through, because I\'m going to run out

of time, folks. We need to decrease procedural ‑‑

let me start here. Overall recommendations to you:

Please clarify the purposes of IDEA.

Clarify that the overall purposes of IDEA are both

protection of rights and improving outcomes. Right

now the statute, because of the regulatory process

and how it\'s being interpreted, is almost entirely

focused on procedure. We need to increase emphasis

on educational issues and access to effective

instruction.

OSEP needs to increase their emphasis and

knowledge on pedagogy and research‑based

instructional practices. The staff at OSEP, many of

whom are special educators, really do need to

understand what are the practices that affect change

in classrooms. What are the scientifically‑based

research practices that we need to be emphasizing for

school districts and states around the United States

so that children\'s educational benefit continues to

improve.

So we need people who are knowledgeable in

pedagogy and what we can do as educators to improve

outcomes.

OSEP needs to disengage the Office of

General Counsel from the process so that educators

can talk to educators. Much of our special

conditions are legalese. And just a bit of levity

there, the saints are talking about how I used to do

it myself, but now I have my lawyers handle it. We

need to have educators talking to educators and

parents and staff people who are serving children

with disabilities.

We need to decrease procedural

prescription. The procedural prescription that talks

about timelines have the same weight and value as

improving outcomes, we need to look at what our

balance is, what are our goals, what are the

benchmarks of what is acceptable and move to that.

We need to increase the focus on ensuring

that parents receive notice of substantial and

substantive action so that they know what\'s going to

happen when they come to meetings, whether it\'s a new

IEP, whether it\'s a placement issue, whether it\'s

eligibility and that they have the right of refusal.

They need to know that the have a right to

participate in those decisions and to disagree with

something substantive in the action, and they need to

know how and be able to act on their rights.

However, a 17‑page procedural rights

document takes forever to explain, and it\'s a very

difficult issue. And I know because I\'ve read

testimony from other people, you have heard this

story before.

We need to reconceptualize data collection

and analysis. In order to support increased emphasis

on outcomes, data collection needs to focus less on

standardized testing from states for the purposes of

cross‑state comparisons because we have different

standards. We need to have national ideas of where

you want the states to move and measure for that. We

need to focus more on making data useful to states,

and states need to do it, conversely, making it

useful for districts in guiding and assessing the

effectiveness of their own improvement efforts.

We need to ensure that all children are

included in the accountability system. We need to

require that state general education data systems

ensure that the entire population of students served

in special ed can be identified for purposes of

accountability and governance. And we need to

acknowledge that some children have very different

learning needs and different ways are needed to

assess them.

We need to support OSEP to get on with

their results‑oriented oversight process and

research‑informed technical assistance. If rights

protection is simplified and we\'re looking at more

substantial issues, OSEP will have more opportunity

to work on outcomes, and the outcomes focus should be

on ensuring that states use information on every

child to guide and evaluate the effectiveness.

We need to support them in modeling

interagency collaboration, and this is so important,

distributing funds in a more effective fashion. All

states need improvement grants. There needs to be

goals for those, but the dollars need to flow and

competitive nature of funding is very difficult for

states.

We need to support states to have

sufficient resource capacity to undertake the

governance job that is expected of them. States

lack, in many cases, that ability. And we have to

assign a realistic level of money to the state for

administration and then allow it some discretion in

how systems are set up. And in California, it can be

a challenge.

We have to remember, folks, that we\'re

here for children. And I want to tell you that I

think we\'ve created a lot more chaos than we should

have, and it was not necessarily our intention or the

fact that we have not clarified what we need to do,

but we cannot forget the essence of why we\'re here.

Children, in particular children with disabilities

and their families, and improving their opportunities

in life.

Thank you again for this opportunity.

DR. COULTER: Thank you, Dr. Parker. Dr.

Gantwerk?

MS. GANTWERK: Good morning. I want to

thank the Commission members very much for inviting

me to participate today. I was asked to address the

state and federal partnerships in special education

strengths as well as the opportunities for

improvement.

Additionally, my e‑mail did say that I

could provide suggestions for improvement in the IDEA

itself. Actually, I think they\'re connected, but I

appreciate the opportunity to provide some of my

impressions, even though I don\'t think I have all the

answers to the difficult tasks that you are facing.

Just to tell you a little bit about me,

I\'ve been the Director of Special Education in New

Jersey for more than seven years now and have worked

in the Department of Education and Special Education

for 23 years. I do know what it\'s like to work in a

large government agency and the constraints and the

difficulties therein.

From my experience, the partnership

between the Office of Special Education, OSEP, and my

office, NJOSEP, as we refer to ourselves, has changed

pretty dramatically over the past few years, perhaps

three or four years. And since that time, I would

say it has been outstanding in a very different way.

Previously, I would have called it adversarial and

nonproductive. I would not call it that at all. I

think it\'s quite collaborative and quite productive.

I find the people I work with, and this

feels to me a little like the Academy Awards where

I\'m going to say JoLeta Reynolds and Lois Taylor and

Merrill Taylor and Ruth Ryder and Larry Wexler and

Larry Ringer, just a few of the people that I have

worked with, have all been extremely supportive and

focused on assisting us in any way that they can, and

I stress any way that they can.

There is a collaborative relationship.

It\'s not a gotcha relationship, even though they get

us. And I do believe that they\'re on our side and

that in fact we\'re on the same side and that\'s what

it\'s supposed to be. We\'re all supposed to be on the

same side.

Now much of this change is due to the new

but ever‑changing monitoring system known as the

Continuous Improvement Monitoring Process. I will

admit that when my staff and I first were notified

that we were to be included in the monitoring process

and attended a meeting, we had a slightly less than

joyous reaction. The Continuous Improvement model

was presented with many circles. We saw lots of

circles and continuous arrows, and some people were

comparing it to the Circle of Life. Our table

compared it to the Wheel of Misfortune.

But I have to say, we were wrong. We were

wrong. The process was indeed a very good one. It

allowed for state flexibility and has led to many

changes in our state. We allowed it to do that

because of the intense work that we put into it, but

the process was a good one. It has moved somewhat

away from the compliance model to more of a program

improvement model, not entirely but certainly it has

moved in that direction, and it is certainly helped

us to focus our efforts on specific areas, organize

our resources, enlist department support, which we

have definitely had. We\'ve reorganized and

restructured to meet our needs.

And another very positive aspect was the

development through the process of successful and

collaborative partnership with the critical

stakeholders in our state.

Now because the model was such a good one

for us, not an easy one, but a good one, we

completely revised our own oversight system and

monitoring system to replicate that model. We

included all of the concepts of district self‑

assessment, steering committees, focus groups, and we

encourage them to do what we did on their steering

committees, which was to include anyone who had sued

you at least three times. And we had lots of

members, and it made a difference. On‑site visits,

database decisionmaking and improvement planning.

And it is important to note that we\'ve

received a great deal of positive response from the

districts that have participated in this new

monitoring process at the state level. We\'ve

completed it now ‑‑ well, actually, we\'re

implementing it now in 276 of the 680 districts that

we have in the tiny state of New Jersey, 60 of those

being charter schools, and those charter schools are

LEAs in our state. And it is not that the process

was easy, and that\'s why districts liked it, all of

the districts had noncompliance. But the process led

to improvement in a manner that was assumed to be

very positive, and we believe it.

The development of our state improvement

plan for personnel development was the basis for our

state improvement grant. And this, along with the

provision of the data enhancement grant, are very

positive ways to support the state\'s effort in a very

coordinated approach. Additionally, the capacity‑

building funds enabled us to target specific problems

in specific districts.

The RRC network is another way that the

federal government provides us with support. Years

ago we received a transition grant which has led to

systemic change at the state level. Now it has not

been easy. Difficult issues were raised. There were

problems. There still are problems. We don\'t deny

that. We are looking to continue to improve. We had

conditions placed on our grant as well. Those

conditions were removed, and I think the results of

all of our efforts have been in the best interests of

children, that it has made a difference.

So I believe that the new direction that

has been taken is very positive and it has served us

well and that we are in fact true partners.

I also believe that if ‑‑ well, I hope ‑‑

that if you talk to some of the other constituencies

in our state who have worked with us on the process,

that they too would agree that the model has led to

significant changes in the relationships and in the

results.

Now nothing\'s ever perfect, so there\'s

always room for improvement,a nd I want to talk about

some of the areas for improvement. And I think one

of the areas for improvement, and certainly Alice has

talked about this, is the law itself that we\'re all

trying to implement. The partnerships are affected

by the law, obviously. The highly procedural nature

of the law and the regulations affects the way OSEP

relates to the states in many different ways. This

is a great law.

We all agree with the goals of this law.

One of the important goals is collaboration between

families and schools, state and district, state and

federal office, and this collaboration I believe is

somewhat undermined by the incredible complexity,

specificity and prescriptiveness of the law. And

instead, sometimes adversarial relationships are

created.

Many aspects of this law are very

difficult to understand. And if this is so for

districts with attorneys and OSEP with the Office of

General Counsel, it is even more so for parents

trying to native the system. It is difficult for any

district or state to be in complete compliance,

because there are many opportunities to slip up.

Clearly it\'s a litigious issue. While we

are very proud in New Jersey that our mediation

system, which has been in place for many years, is

very successful, the entire process creates a fear of

litigation. Too frequently, districts start from a

calculation of what it will cost to win, and like

everywhere else in the legal world today, people give

in if it\'s going to cost more to win.

There often exists a lack of trust, and

that is in fact contrary to the intention of the law

and is not in the best interest of children. It is

so complex that we have many questions. I certainly

know I do. I call all the time. Discipline is a

prime example. It is so complicated that any

question requires a review by general counsel, and as

a result, it takes the department months to answer

questions that in the states we must answer right

away since district cannot wait.

I must say I find it sad that districts

and parents must so often consult their attorneys and

advocates when making educational decisions. I

believe and hope that as an example, the discipline

section could be simpler while maintaining important

principles that schools should be safe for all.

Students should not be punished for their disability.

Beyond ten days, you get services. The major focus

should be on identifying and providing the

appropriate program rather than a manifestation

determination. Whether it is or it isn\'t a

manifestation, the key issue is what is the right

program for this child?

Sometimes the interpretations by the

general counsel are such that they don\'t make sound

educational policy and have considerable unintended

consequence. An example of this for us was that the

OGC determined that the law does not allow a district

to use mediation or due process to overturn a

parent\'s refusal to consent to initial services. We

disagreed strongly. But since the receipt of our

funds was dependent on changing our rules, we changed

them. This was not in the best interest of our

students, and I believe it was contrary to the intent

of IDEA and that some students could in fact be

denied services without recourse on the part of the

districts.

The districts really need to be able to

advocate for the child as well. We then asked if the

child is still to be considered a child with a

disability for discipline purposes after the parent

refuses services. I have been waiting seven months

for an answer. Our office has provided an answer to

the districts, but we\'ve told them the caveat that we

are still awaiting the real response.

The IEP is too long. We need IEPs. But

currently, they have become long legal documents as

opposed to instructional tools. It is so time

consuming that districts all look to have some

computerized IEP that spits out hundreds of

objectives but which are hardly blueprints of

instruction. I think that in many cases they may be

written but not actually read a whole lot.

We need to revisit this issue to ensure

that the IEP is designed to be an effective tool for

informing instruction.

There is so much formality about the law

that it even addresses when staff may talk about a

child and not have it considered a meeting. So now

we have regulations telling us when a meeting is not

a meeting.

I\'m not going to go into all of the

recommendations that I made for modifications because

I have to believe that you\'ve heard them all ten

times already and many more. But I do have copies of

the letter that I sent to Washington with all of

them. My point in making them now is that I believe

that the partnership between OSEP and the states is

related to the complexity of the law itself.

Additionally, the law is not sufficiently focused on

compliance ‑‑ I mean on outcome, and is more focused

on compliance. While it changed in \'97 and moved us

forward, we still have an overall focus on compliance

in the law, and they and we are implementing that

law.

I do want to make certain that I mention

that I\'m very aware of the difficult task of

balancing rights and protections with flexibility and

simplifying the law. This is a difficult task. I

also want to mention that sometimes the technical

assistance and guidance that we receive is a

repetition of the law because sometimes it\'s

difficult to interpret.

What we need is more help and guidance, as

Alice talked about, in implementing important

concepts. And I\'ll use the alternate assessment as

an example. This was required, and every state

approached it differently, and we had to just work it

ourselves hoping that we\'d get it right. We\'re now

required to include these scores in the

accountability system. This is good. Across the

country we are all talking about how to do this.

It would be helpful to have assistance and

direction as to how to do this in an educationally

appropriate way, and in a way that will be acceptable

to all the monitors that are going to come in from

the various programs and tell us if we\'ve done it

right. We\'d like to have that before, understanding

that states will do things differently

This is also an example of the need for

OSEP to work with other units and clarify the impact

of those other laws clearly such as No Child Left

Behind on students with disabilities.

The other area I think that has been

mentioned is that requests for major pieces of

documentation from the states tend to be works in

progress, and the request may change midstream. The

eligibility documents for the grants took us over a

year to get together, and I think all states were

doing it differently, and I\'m not sure any of us did

it right.

So I think it\'s critical to have clear

directions from OSEP. We all agree that we\'re trying

to move in the direction of a focus on results and

less on compliance. We support all of OSEP\'s efforts

in this and want to continue to move forward. We

don\'t yet have clarity on what exactly this means.

As I said, the law is still mostly focused on

compliance.

So what are the results that will be used

to identify progress? OSEP will need to ensure that

the indicators they use in comparing states to

identify potential problems are in fact based on

comparable data. This is often not the case as each

state has a different assessment system, varying

levels of difficulty, different graduation

requirements, graduation rates and dropout rates are

good examples of information that is collected very

differently across the country.

In closing ‑‑ I am closing now. I wanted

to make sure you knew ‑‑ that the partnership is

extremely positive and has effected significant

positive change at the state level. Even the

conditions were useful to us. I realize that

partnerships go two ways, and that we have a great

deal of responsibility to focus on improving

instruction and educational outcomes for students,

With great respect for all the work that\'s

being done in OSEP, my suggestions for improvement in

the partnership would be streamlining and simplifying

the law that we\'re all working to implement. Moving

forward with the new monitoring process to a greater

focus on accountability for results and less on

procedural compliance. Providing additional guidance

on implementing important concepts. Identifying that

which OSEP has the authority to require and that

which they do not prior to asking for it. And I

could not go home without saying giving us additional

dollars to support the increased administrative

activities at the state level, and of course

additional funds to support the costs at the local

level.

Partnerships really do well when you give

extra money. And I want to thank you again for

inviting me and giving me this opportunity.

DR. COULTER: And the Commission would

like to thank you both for your formal testimony.

We\'d like to now move to the portion of our agenda

where Commissioners ask questions, and I want to

emphasize that for us, we find not only your formal

testimony very helpful but also answers to questions.

It helps us clarify issues.

However, we have, just like you have

limited time, we also have limited time. So

Commissioners, we\'ve allocated roughly five minutes

per Commissioner for questions and answers. So

Commissioner Fletcher, would you like to begin?

DR. FLETCHER: I\'d like to follow up on

some of the issues that involve the issues of

alternate exams in the accountability system, because

I heard both of you testify that inclusion of

children with disabilities is very important from a

general view but has also been very important in both

your states.

And I heard very clearly that New Jersey

has an alternate assessment?

MS. GANTWERK: Yes.

DR. FLETCHER: Is the state exam, state

accountability exam, a criterion reference test?

MS. GANTWERK: It\'s a performance‑based

portfolio assessment based on our state for

curriculum content standards designed individually

for each child.

DR. FLETCHER: I see. Sorry I asked.

What\'s the alternate assessment?

MS. GANTWERK: That is the alternate.

DR. FLETCHER: I\'m sorry. What I was

asking is, I\'m trying to understand the relationship

between the alternate assessment and what would

happen with a child who didn\'t have a disability.

MS. GANTWERK: Oh. We have state tests

that test the state standards and the standards ‑‑ we

have graduation test, a required graduation test. We

have fourth and eighth grade tests.

DR. FLETCHER: Criterion reference tied to

state standards?

MS. GANTWERK: Tied to the state

standards. And the state standards are the basis for

the alternate assessment as well, but there are

different indicators since the students who are

taking the alternate assessment cannot in a sense

enter the level of the state test.

DR. FLETCHER: Right. But you said it\'s a

portfolio assessment. So it\'s not a formal

assessment?

MS. GANTWERK: It\'s not a paper and pencil

test at all. Right.

DR. FLETCHER: So how do you explain to

OSEP the relationship of the alternate assessment and

the state assessment?

MS. GANTWERK: Well, they\'re based on the

same standards, so it\'s connected to the standards

that everyone is addressing. However, the indicators

of levels of performance are different. They are

essentially lower. The state test started at a third

grade level. These are students who are not

participating in the same academic level of

instruction. So we explain it to them.

DR. FLETCHER: But if we don\'t have the

same expectations for children with disabilities, how

can you possibly talk about whether children with

disabilities are meeting the same ‑‑ have the same

sorts of expectations as children who don\'t have

disabilities ?

MS. GANTWERK: We have the same

expectations for all children, but not all children

can participate in the state assessments at the level

they are given. And so by the very nature that

they\'re not participating in those, it\'s different,

and we were required to implement the tests because

there are some kids that are not going to be able to

participate. So we have a different level.

We have not yet ‑‑ we were only

implementing it this year for the first time, and now

we are determining how we will put those scores into

the accountability system. Most states ‑‑ many

states have not yet put those scores into the

accountability system.

DR. FLETCHER: I wish you luck.

MS. GANTWERK: Yes, we need it.

DR. FLETCHER: Dr. Parker, I had the same

question for you. I know what California does for

state accountability. How do children with

disabilities participate?

DR. PARKER: children with disabilities

are participating in the STAR assessment, which is

the state assessment grades second through 11. And

they participated in the KC, the California High

School Exit Exam last year and this year with

accommodations and modifications that are on their

IEPs or their 504 plans.

Additionally, we just let a contract

yesterday to ETS to take over our state assessment as

well as the development of an alternate assessment

that is indeed aligned to our accountability

assessment. So that we\'re looking at at least 95

percent as is in NCLB, but we really hope that we\'re

not going to leave 5 percent of kids out.

DR. FLETCHER: Now I\'ll ask the relevant

question that I was really curious about, and that

is, at least in New Jersey, you talked about needing

technical assistance from OSEP in designing

assessments and things of that sort. I\'m wondering

if other OSEP programs like the National Center for

Educational Outcomes, is of any assistance to either

of you?

DR. PARKER: Absolutely.

MS. GANTWERK: I think they\'ve been of

assistance. I just want to say, when I spoke about

our assessment system, we have over 95 percent of our

students with disabilities participating in our

traditional assessment. That needs to be understood.

DR. FLETCHER: Oh, okay.

MS. GANTWERK: This is just for a very

small group, the one I was talking about. The

National Center has been helpful, but I think

sometimes what it\'s been doing is looking at what the

other states have done and giving us the information

on what is being done. There\'s a difference.

This is a difficult issue. No one has led

the way.

DR. FLETCHER: Do you get any technical

assistance from any OSEP program around assessment

issues?

MS. GANTWERK: Yes.

DR. PARKER: We do from NCEO.

MS. GANTWERK: We do.

DR. FLETCHER: And even in terms of things

like test design and how to count students with

disabilities and things of that sort?

DR. PARKER: Yes we have.

MS. GANTWERK: Yes. We get information

definitely.

DR. FLETCHER: So they\'re pretty useful to

you?

MS. GANTWERK: Yes.

DR. PARKER: I think they\'re pretty

useful. And we actually have an interloper who

escaped from NCEO who is an assistant superintendent

of special ed in California now.

DR. FLETCHER: Thank you.

DR. COULTER: Dr. Pasternack?

DR. PASTERNACK: Good morning, Mr.

Chairman. I apologize for my tardiness this morning.

My former colleagues, nice to see both of you. I

guess the first question that I have, Dr. Parker, you

mentioned I believe this is a direct quote, you were

expecting OSEP national ideas on where you want the

states to move. So my first question is, who do you

think knows best about some of these issues, the feds

or the states? And what do the feds know best and

what do the states know best? I\'d like to ask both

of you a quick response to that.

DR. PARKER: Okay. My quick response is

that closer to home knows better about your

individual differences and needs and styles.

However, you need to know what is sufficient. So a

federal standard of sufficiency of what is

acceptable, of where your goals are and clearly is

coming through NCLB. So, you know that I\'ll preach

to the choir about literacy and reading and

scientifically based approaches and all of that,

because that\'s my background as well.

But what\'s the level that people expect us

to aim toward? What is acceptable, what is

sufficient, and then know that the individual

differences are understood best by the states, and

even more particularly by the districts within the

state, and the differences therein.

MS. GANTWERK: If I understood your

question, I would say that there\'s a role both close

to home and on a national level. If you were asking

about identifying great practices and what we should

be doing, I think OSEP has a role in identifying

nationally‑based research and guiding us, and at the

same time we at the local level are doing a lot. I

think it\'s a partnership in that way and that we can

benefit from what you learn.

DR. PASTERNACK: Thanks. And that\'s kind

of the next set of questions that I wanted to get to

is the nature of that partnership and what it should

be.

The next question I\'d like to ask both of

you is that what are the most difficult problems that

you\'re facing in your states and how has OSEP

specifically helped you with those issues?

MS. GANTWERK: Well, there are many

issues. I would say, first of all, what they\'ve

helped us with a lot is the entire oversight system.

I mean, it was determined that it wasn\'t working in

our state, and so they helped us to really set in

place a new system of oversight to be effective with

the district, having so many districts in our state ‑

‑ I mean, California has even more ‑‑ was a difficult

issue.

So I think the oversight system, how we

move forward in looking at results is a critical

problem, and I think we\'re going to need more help in

saying what are we looking at, what are the data that

we\'re going to be comparing, and how can we gather

that in a nationally comparable way?

Certainly I think giving us the

dissemination of good practices in different programs

clearing including kids in regular classrooms and

different areas, I think that\'s been effective as

well. Our problems now I think do have to do with

matching No Child Left Behind, how we\'re going to

deal with the new accountability system, how we\'re

going to include the alternate assessment into the

accountability system. Are we going to have to have

alternate assessments for third through eighth grade

now that we\'re going to test in every grade?

So some of those are issues that I think

we need guidance in.

DR. PARKER: Similar areas. The areas of

where are things going really well that have a

balance between procedural guarantee and outcome.

Point us to places where it\'s really working and it\'s

really happening. That\'s a critical need, and at

times it\'s been very helpful to have the research to

practice people attend meetings with their colleagues

from MSIP so that both sides of OSEP are working

together really.

When that happens, that\'s when you get the

best support and information. The technical

assistance that\'s provided through the regional

resource centers and through your office. I don\'t

know if you heard my comment about JoLeta, but the

staff development activities are really wonderful,

wonderful activities. We really need to get clarity,

though, about what are the expectations without

things changing in midstream, what\'s the reasonable

amount of data, and we need to understand our

timelines.

We get timelines that we have to turn

around so quickly and then we don\'t hear back for a

long time. And by the time we get a response back,

it\'s not one that we can use to inform our practice

and to understand that if there are issues that show

up in the general data, that it\'s not something

that\'s specific in each school district or in each

schoolhouse in our state.

DR. PASTERNACK: I know time is short.

I\'m going to try to get to a couple of other quick

questions. One difficult question, and I know both

of you, and I know I\'ll get an honest answer. Do you

think the expertise exists within OSEP to be able to

provide you the kind of technical assistance that

you\'re saying you need, particularly in light of HR‑1

and No Child Left Behind?

DR. PARKER: I don\'t think so, Bob. Just

like I would tell you the same thing about my staff.

I drive my staff crazy because I tell them if you\'ve

been in this office for more than six weeks and you

haven\'t been out in the field practicing, you\'re not

an expert anymore. Figure that out and figure out

where you go to get the expert help. And I think

that\'s happened with OSEP staff as well.

MS. GANTWERK: I would say the answer is

yes, because the expertise is not that you have to

know everything. No one knows everything. The

expertise is that you know where to go to find the

people who can be helpful and negotiate them to be

working with us as states. I don\'t think there could

be an organization that had people who knew the

answers to everything. It\'s people who know how to

get them. And I think they do.

DR. PASTERNACK: Mr. Chairman, if you\'ll

permit me just a couple of quick yes/no questions.

DR. COULTER: Quick.

DR. PASTERNACK: I don\'t want to take Dr.

Sontag\'s time for sure. The special conditions that

your state\'s been under. Helped or not helped? I

guess I should be more specific with the question.

Helped improve services and results for students with

disabilities and families in your state, yes or no?

DR. PARKER: Yes and no.

DR. PASTERNACK: Yes and no, huh?

DR. PARKER: Yes and no. The fact that it

helped me make a systems change effort move more

rapidly than it would have otherwise, yes. But we

would have gotten there in a longer amount of time.

So the timeframe helped me, yes.

DR. PASTERNACK: Okay. Thanks.

MS. GANTWERK: Yes, it did help us. And

it speeded us into time warp zone to make some of the

changes that we needed to make.

DR. PASTERNACK: And even though I\'ve got

a bunch more, one last quick one. The eligibility

document process that\'s currently in place, helpful,

not helpful?

DR. PARKER: It\'s terribly unhelpful.

DR. PASTERNACK: Thank you.

MS. GANTWERK: Well, the eligibility, it

wasn\'t helpful last year, but now that we got through

it, this year we have very little to do. So I think

once we got through it, it\'s okay now. I mean, once

we figured it out, we gave in seven boxes of material

and took back eight boxes of material, and now I

think we understand the system. So now I think it\'s

pretty easy unless we still don\'t understand it.

DR. COULTER: Commissioner Sontag?

DR. SONTAG: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I

have just two general questions. First, both of you

were very complimentary of OSEP staff and how they

had facilitated your work. Both of you were also

critical of the Office of General Counsel. I\'m

interested, were there differences in opinions

between the Office of Special Education and the

Office of General Counsel? And if so, how did you

become aware of those?

DR. PARKER: One of the things that I

would say is that the language that comes ‑‑ you have

a conversation with the OSEP staff and I tend to

write down everything, so I\'ve written down what our

agreements are when we finish the meeting. And I get

the response, we\'ll send it to you in writing. And

by the time I get it several months hence, therein

you begin to understand that maybe some attorneys are

doing this if it takes several months.

It\'s this long sentence that has a lot of

words that are hard to define that includes very

difficult information together, that\'s very different

than the concept we had when they left. And I

frankly asked, who wrote this, and was told that it

was Office of General Counsel.

MS. GANTWERK: I\'m not sure exactly what

they think or what their disagreement is all the

time. I do know when they can\'t answer and it has to

go to general counsel and I don\'t agree with the

answer, I know that I don\'t agree with the general

counsel. I assume it takes so long because it\'s so

complicated and they don\'t have the ability to answer

the questions. I can\'t speak to their disagreements

with it, only my own.

DR. SONTAG: So it appears essentially

you\'re dealing with two different entities?

MS. GANTWERK: Mm‑hmm.

DR. PARKER: Yeah. You start out but then

it winds up someplace else.

DR. SONTAG: My second question also goes

to the issue of the relationship with OSEP and your

experience with monitoring. But I need to make a

statement essentially as part of my question. In the

fall of 1998 I was a university professor at the

University of Wisconsin. OSEP announced a monitoring

visit late fall, held what was called a facilitating

meeting or something like that. I had a group of

teachers, graduate students who submitted a pretty

lengthy report on IEP\'s quality thereof or the

lacking thereof primarily, and later in that year I

moved to the office of Governor Tommy Thompson as a

policy advisor and kept an eye on the OSEP

monitoring.

But almost two years later we received a

monitoring report in the state. Do you find that\'s

typical? What rationale could be behind such a

tardiness in a key aspect of IDEA? In other words,

if the feds are not monitoring in a timely manner, is

the law going to work?

MS. GANTWERK: I can speak first. I think

it\'s typical that the reports take a long time. Ours

took over one year to get back, and by the time we

got the report, we had had another monitoring visit.

So the report was on a visit prior to the one that we

had and had to sort of update with another visit. So

I think that is a problem.

The reason for the tardiness I can only

assume that it takes a long time to get anything

through and that probably it has to ‑‑ we always

think it goes to the Office of General Counsel. You

can see that\'s where we think things get stuck. I

mean, we don\'t know, but.

DR. PARKER: I would respond similarly.

We get reports later than one can use them. But

being in a large behemoth bureaucratic situation as

well, it\'s workload and the amount of staff you have

too. And cranking it out. So I feel for them,

because I know how I have to pound on people to get

reports out in a timely manner in California. But

it\'s not helpful if it comes two years later.

DR. SONTAG: It was certainly not helpful

in Wisconsin. By the time the report came out it was

essentially mush. It didn\'t focus on IEPs, a major

problem in Wisconsin. Thank you.

DR. COULTER: Commissioner Takemoto?

MS. TAKEMOTO: Thank you so much for your

testimony. I\'d like to follow up on Dr. Sontag\'s

question. The last round that I participated in in

Virginia, the parent training information centers

were required to participate. Parents were required

to participate. There was a whole stakeholder group,

and it was a continuous improvement monitoring

process.

We had help from the regional resource

center to come up with a process so that we as a

state did not have to do that ourselves. And our

report in Virginia, and I don\'t know how it is in

your state, but our report in Virginia really said

this is what we did, this is what we identified needs

to be done, and this is what we want to do. And I

don\'t think that we\'re waiting for blessings from

OSEP to say, okay, now you can go fix it. In fact,

OSEP told us as soon as that report\'s out, we expect

you to continue to do this. Is that how things are

working in your state? And I have a lot of

questions. So I need a yes/no and short answer here.

DR. PARKER: I\'ll give you a quick one

here. It sort of is working that way in California.

We\'ve been looking at data and identifying through

our monitoring process including parents as major

stakeholders and all parts of our educational

community what our areas are of need. And I\'ve

talked to my state contacts and said these are the

three areas that have been blessed by our stakeholder

groups. We\'re moving on these.

MS. GANTWERK: For me, yes. The answer

is, as you said, we did not wait for the report. We

felt that the exit conference gave us a lot of

information. We moved right into the improvement

planning, and we began the activities of improvement

planning. So that\'s why I say it was the process

that was useful to us, not necessarily only the paper

report.

DR. TAKEMOTO: Yes. And the stakeholders

own, the issues the stakeholders own the process for

fixing it. And I know in our state we said, well I

said, don\'t look at what OSEP is telling you to do

here and how they want it back. Look at how this

fits into the improvements that we\'re already working

on.

Dr. Parker, this is a real quick one but

one of concern to me. In the process of these

hearings we\'ve heard a lot about what works in

special education, what is possible. I\'ve also been

distressed to hear from many families about how it\'s

not happening for them. In fact, there has been

perceived damages to the child because of their

experience in special education, as well as some

experts who said if you don\'t do the intervention

there is this downward spiral and unfortunately the

other end has things like dropouts, juvenile justice

involvement and substance abuse.

I agreed with much of your testimony.

This is kind of an either/or. You said that rather

than focusing on process, we need to focus on

outcome. But then I was concerned when later on that

you said and that you would have to prove substantive

loss as opposed to adequate yearly progress?

DR. PARKER: I didn\'t want to leave out

adequate yearly progress. Certainly there needs to

be a balance of adequate yearly progress, improved

outcomes and procedural guarantees.

MS. TAKEMOTO: Okay.

DR. PARKER: We can never ever get that

right. This is a civil rights law that I believe in,

so if that was what you heard, that was not clear.

MS. TAKEMOTO: That\'s what\'s written in

the record. So Dr. Chair, if we can make sure that

substantive loss is not a part of a recommendation

that we would have, trading process for substantive

loss.

And on the other, in San Diego we met with

a group of parents, and I\'ve heard that this is not

taking off kid gloves to ask this question ‑‑

DR. PARKER: No. Go right ahead.

MS. TAKEMOTO: That from parents we heard

that there have been years and years and years of you

rassling with the county or city, I\'m not sure which.

DR. PARKER: City.

MS. TAKEMOTO: To make changes that you

see, that the monitorings have seen. What could OSEP

do to help you do your job better so that children in

San Diego would not be sitting in group homes without

education, sitting at home without education,

dropping out, and parents fearing retaliation and

putting their kids in private school, the regular

kids in private school, because they\'re afraid of

retaliation?

DR. PARKER: Well, I actually have talked

with the secretary\'s regional representative about

beginning to meet with us and the Office of Civil

Rights with San Diego City and possibly joining with

us in a lawsuit.

MS. TAKEMOTO: Could OSEP help? Because

I\'ve heard lawsuit and I\'ve heard two sets of

attorneys from different ‑‑

DR. PARKER: They\'re there already. I\'m

being deposed next week.

MS. TAKEMOTO: There are lots of ways of

putting off progress with lawsuits. Is there

anything that OSEP could do in terms of sanctions, in

terms of taking over from you the responsibility for

looking at these very, very few performing schools

but troubling school systems? Is there anything that

OSEP could do so that this is something that is

quicker and kids aren\'t in the meantime floundering?

DR. PARKER: I don\'t know that an OSEP

takeover would be the answer. I don\'t think they

would want to do that first of all.

MS. TAKEMOTO: Because you know how hard

it is, and you wouldn\'t wish it on anybody else.

DR. PARKER: I do know how hard it is.

And I know how hard it is when we have in our sights

right now the possibility that we will be taking over

a district because of bankruptcy in special education

programs. It\'s a very small district in our state,

but we\'re going to court about that to take them over

in June.

And to think about taking over a district

as large as San Diego without being in partnership

with the state and the local folks would be I think

next to impossible. It\'s like putting in a monitor

to take over a district that\'s gone bankrupt. And

we\'ve had experience with that fiscally in

California. It\'s not necessarily a clean solution.

I think the solution is to look at how we

build partnerships with the community activists, with

various agencies that want to be involved with us.

We have a partnership with OCR right now in that

district. We need to get in and do what we\'re doing.

The question is that I think one should

probably look at in this situation, withholding some

of the fiscal resources to the administration, not to

children. One of the problems with withholding

dollars for programs is it then has a pervasive

effect on all children who have a smaller fiscal base

to handle the educational costs. And so it hurts

more children.

But to look at who are the responsible

parties, the superintendent and a board of trustees

is something that I think we need to seriously look

at it. I don\'t know, to be perfectly blunt, and I

may get my head handed to me for this, but in a state

the size of California with its interesting politics

and the election year with it being a gubernatorial

election, it would be a popular time to withhold

superintendent salaries. Yes, that would be me with

the arrows in me, yes.

DR. COULTER: Thank you, Commissioner.

Commissioner Berdine?

MR. BERDINE: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I

really enjoy your testimony. I appreciate it when I

hear state directors talk with such clarity and with

such accuracy. So I really do appreciate your taking

the time to come here and visit with us.

Most of my questions have been answered

through my fellow Commissioners. And one of the

advantages of being at the end of the table like this

is that they can do the work and I can really focus

on why I\'m here.

I\'m on the Commission primarily because of

my interest and experience in personnel preparation.

And your states are just so interesting to me. The

diversity that you offer is amazing. In California,

your African American population alone would be the

fourth largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

And your students served in New Jersey would be the

population of the largest city of Kentucky,

Louisville. So we\'re very different.

So I have two OSEP‑related questions, one

to do with use of dollars, OSEP dollars, and the

other to deal with something that nobody\'s mentioned

today, which is personnel and what OSEP can do about

personnel. Neither of you noted any shortages, so

I\'m assuming that California and New Jersey have no

shortages in personnel.

DR. PARKER: No. It\'s because Dr. Coulter

was going ‑‑ and so I had to skip that part of my

testimony.

MR. BERDINE: Just ignore him like we do.

(Laughter.)

MR. BERDINE: With dollars. Could you

give us some advice or OSEP some advice? States with

a population and the diversity and the numbers that

you have, is there a formula or another way that the

available budget can be expended and still assure

states like Kentucky with a population only 7.4

million equity with states such as New Jersey and

California? That\'s a question for both of you.

I\'m going to ask you both questions and

then I\'ll just be quiet and listen. The second

question is, with regard to personnel preparation,

are there recommendations that you could make for

OSEP with regard to personnel preparation from the

leadership or doctoral level all the way to the

classroom practitioner? I\'m fairly familiar with

California\'s higher education system, and I know that

within the last five years you\'ve only had either two

to five doctoral graduates in special ed.

DR. PARKER: We had two last year.

MR. BERDINE: And I don\'t know the numbers

of teachers. So I\'m sure that Mrs. Lee here, sitting

here who\'s in charge of OSEP would be very curious

about what your recommendations would be to increase

OSEP\'s ability to facilitate personnel preparation.

So two questions. One with dollars and

one with teachers.

DR. PARKER: Well, I\'ll start.

DR. COULTER: And quickly. Thank you.

DR. PARKER: Quickly. Thank you, Dr.

Coulter. Dr. C is after me again. There\'s a lot to

be said about putting together the pieces of money to

flow to a state that then will go to personnel prep

and CSPD and retention training pre‑service/in‑

service, into one larger bucket instead of the

splintered pieces so that states can look at what

their specific needs are in collaboration with their

IAGs.

The other thing that OSEP could do, very

quickly, is to identify creative solutions to teacher

recruitment and training programs, the seven pack.

It sounds like beer run amok, but those are the seven

large states. And we meet a couple of times a year,

and we include once a year the largest urban district

from each of our states, and that is our topic that

we cover every time is what are creative solutions to

bringing more folks into the profession, both

administrative, teaching and support staff.

And so we do it from that standpoint of

looking at creative relationships with IAGs, with

places and ways to train folks close to where they

are, and how to bring people in in alternative ways.

And there\'s some great solutions. But if OSEP could

help identify those and help fund and replicate

those, that would go a long way. And we have

currently 23,000 teacher openings for special

education in California that are noncredentialed ‑‑

they\'re credentialed but they\'re on emergency

waivers, and we don\'t know how many 20‑day subs are

in our special ed classrooms. We\'ve got a problem.

MR. BERDINE: Ms. Gantwerk?

MS. GANTWERK: Well, I would just agree

with everything Alice said in terms of the money,

coordinating the personnel prep grants so that we in

the department know what\'s going out and know that it

can be geared to the needs that we have.

We have significant shortages in New

Jersey similarly in teachers, special education

teachers. And actually the biggest problem we have

is in speech language specialists, which seems to be

the thing that districts cannot find. So those are

two areas that we need help in.

And I would agree with what has been said

in terms of the coordination of the funds and helping

us in identifying the strategies. Sometimes it is

not only, and I think Al said this, the issue of

finding teachers, it is the retention, that teachers

seem to be going out and leaving the field. There\'s

been some research on why, and maybe we need to look

at the research on why people are leaving to see how

we address it up front.

MR. BERDINE: Thank you.

DR. COULTER: Thank you. I have one quick

question, because like Commissioner Berdine, I think

a lot of my fellow Commissioners have answered the

questions. And I want to compliment you on doing a

very good job of providing us with constructive

information. It\'s often difficult to put things in a

way that does not bite the hand that feeds you, and I

am aware of who\'s in the audience and the fact that

this is public record.

Let me ask you with regard to both of you

I think have spoken to the issue of continuous

improvement and the focus that you\'ve attempted to

apply in continuous improvement, and certainly Dr.

Parker was very data oriented and quite impressive

about the improvements, albeit modest, but

nonetheless you can speak quantitatively to those

improvements. Do either of you feel any anxiety as a

state in focusing on outcomes as you have described

as opposed to paying more attention to process? Or

do you see that ‑‑ how do you dance sort of that

delicate balance between the two?

MS. GANTWERK: I think, as I said, there

is some anxiety in terms of focusing on results,

because we have to decide what those results are.

And we have to make sure that we\'re comparing

ourselves in similar ways and what are the results.

Some of the indicators that were originally

identified in the monitoring process were data

results based on placement. And I\'m not sure those

are results. Those are facts about where kids are

placed, but results seems to me more related to what

happens after that placement and post‑school

outcomes.

So we have to decide if really we find out

after children leave school what our results were,

are we going to be able to collect that data? Will

results still be focused on procedural kinds of data

as if they are outcomes?

I also think the issue of the assessments

are critical ones for us in figuring out how we give

results. Including the alternate assessment is going

to be a very tricky issue in the accountability and

reporting results. If one state is reporting

proficiency on an alternate assessment as proficiency

on their traditional assessment and those are

reported as the same, it\'s going to look very

different from a state that does not report them as

equal scores. So equating scores that are not from

equal tests, it\'s going to be difficult. And with

ESEA and No Child Left Behind, rather, requiring us

to have 100 percent of subgroups achieving the same

levels, I think there\'s some really interesting

challenges for us ahead.

DR. COULTER: Dr. Parker?

DR. PARKER: I would say that some of the

most important things to do for any group of parents

and educators working to improve things for kids is

to look at what are those few really key focused

elements. And that\'s what I will not waiver from. I

want kids to learn how to read. I want kids to learn

how to behave in school so that they can be

successful in life. I want kids to have opportunity

to access the general curriculum, and I want them to

be taught by qualified staff.

We have goals for our kids that are

aligned with our standards. We have eight key

performance indicators that our steering committee

and our stakeholder groups have blessed and agreed

are critical, and we\'re focusing on that.

Now some of the downside of not

necessarily focusing as much on all 814 of those

elements that are on our memorial list in California

for monitoring, thanks to our special condition, is

that if you don\'t know which are more important than

others, you can end up in some situations that are

litigated. And so you\'ve got to balance that as

well. So tie back those procedure elements to

outcome elements as well, but you have to have key

focused ones.

DR. COULTER: Should OSEP make decisions

about what\'s important or should states make

decisions about what\'s important?

MS. GANTWERK: I think it\'s a partnership.

I think we at the state level gather together our

stakeholders and identified what worked for us, the

key elements, the key results that we wanted to look

at. And they were very similar to what Alice said.

We said those are the ones we\'re going to

address. But I think that OSEP has to do the same,

because their monitoring is based on identifying

those issues, and we should be looking in a

comparable way.

So I think we both have to do it and we

both have to gather the appropriate constituencies

together to come upon agreed results that we\'re going

to look at.

DR. COULTER: Dr. Parker?

DR. PARKER: I think I\'d lean more to the

local issue. The state determining what their goals

are for the children in their state, and, though, to

know what our national agenda clearly is and to align

the state specific agenda to the national agenda for

outcomes.

DR. COULTER: I was struck ‑‑ you can\'t

make good decisions if you don\'t have good data. I

was struck by your comment that, if I heard this

correctly, that OSEP permits different definitions as

data are reported?

MS. GANTWERK: Absolutely.

DR. COULTER: Do you have any feelings

about ‑‑ should that be permitted?

DR. PARKER: Well, it shouldn\'t be

permitted if we\'re going to be ranked. However, if

states are compare ‑‑ and I don\'t know a solution for

OSEP to do that, because we\'re all a bunch of

different folk out there, as you well know. I have a

friend who\'s a state director in a fairly small state

whose definition of dropout is radically different

than California\'s definition of dropout, and so they

report what their state\'s definition is and we report

ours.

I don\'t want to be compared to them. I

want to be compared to California over time. Are we

making progress in that area.

MS. GANTWERK: I think the issue is, what

are the data used for? If they\'re going to use it to

compare states to states and then identify problem

states, then the data have to be comparable.

DR. COULTER: Okay. Thank you. Executive

Director Jones?

MR. JONES: Just one short question. The

issue of resources. You brought up the need for more

state resources. To what extent are your staff paid

for by federal funds and what extent by state funds?

DR. PARKER: We could have said in unison

100 percent.

MS. GANTWERK: Except for me, I\'m on state

funds.

DR. PARKER: I\'m a federal employee.

MR. JONES: I mean, in my mind, which begs

the question, in a desire to have more resources,

don\'t you think your states have at least some

responsibility for providing the resources to operate

state agencies?

DR. PARKER: Yes I do. But that\'s not

going to happen in my lifetime in this administration

in California, nor did it happen in several directors

before me.

We retain less than 3 percent of the

federal grant right now. The rest flows through to

our local agencies, and it needs to go to kids. But

I agree with what I believe you were saying is I

believe the state also has a responsibility to

provide us with the resources to do our job.

MR. JONES: Should that look like a match,

perchance, or do you have any idea?

DR. PARKER: I was hoping that you all

would recommend to Congress that there be a formula

that requires a certain federal dollar percentage

stay at the state level for administration.

MR. JONES: That\'s actually a different

question than I asked you. Should the state be

required to put up money to ‑‑

DR. PARKER: The match. It would get to

the same end point, yes. I could live with that

easily.

MS. GANTWERK: I don\'t know. I\'m not sure

if it should. I think many of the state activities

that we\'re engaged in are a result of the federal

requirements, and as such, it would be helpful to

provide the funds. Additionally, the state is

providing a tremendous amount of funds to the local

districts, and as they see it, a lot of that is the

result of the federal requirements as well. And

since the state is providing the greatest share of

the funds totally, I\'m not sure it\'s such an issue to

have it. I don\'t know. I wouldn\'t mind it.

DR. JONES: But it\'s somewhere, the things

your state office does, it\'s somewhat less than 100

percent federal imposed. In other words, there\'s

some percentage you might do on your own? Ten, 20?

MS. GANTWERK: There\'s probably some

percent, sure. There are some things in our

regulations that are ours that are not yours. That\'s

true.

DR. COULTER: I want to thank you very

much for your testimony. And I\'ve had requests from

Commissioners. Dr. Parker, could you leave with us a

copy of your images that you show? And Ms. Gantwerk,

we\'d also like a copy of your written testimony, what

you spoke from, okay?

MS. GANTWERK: Okay.

DR. COULTER: Once again, we very much

appreciate the difficult spot in which you found

yourself, and yet you rose nicely to the occasion.

I need to say to the audience that despite

all my compulsiveness, we are approximately now 34

minutes behind our schedule, and I have to respond to

a logistics request. So we\'re going to take a ten‑

minute break, and we will come back. The nice thing

about this is we have generous time this afternoon.

It looks like we\'re going to use it. Thank you very

much.

(Recess.)

DR. COULTER: Dr. Thomas Hehir is the

Director of the School Leadership Program at the

Harvard Graduate School of Education. Most pertinent

and important to today\'s discussion is that he served

with distinction as the Director of the Office of

Special Education Programs from 1993 to 1999, and we

asked Dr. Hehir to come and speak today on the Office

of Special Education Programs what works and how OSEP

is becoming more effective.

Thank you, Dr. Hehir.

DR. HEHIR: Thank you. Good morning. I\'m

very pleased to address the Commission today, and I

thank you very much for this invitation.

I am Tom Hehir, and as Alan said, I run

the School Leadership Program at Harvard University.

I also teach courses in disability at Harvard to

predominantly general educators. I tell my friends

that after 30 years in special ed, I finally got

mainstreamed.

In 1993 I became the director of OSEP.

When I came to OSEP I had a largely positive view of

federal leadership and of OSEP itself. There were

many people who had served both political and career

roles within the Office of Special Education and

within OSERS, Office of Special Education

Rehabilitative Services, who I felt had made a major

impact on improving education for children with

disabilities. People like Madeleine Will, Tom

Bellamy, Judy Schrog, and many career staff like Lou

Danielson and Patty Guard and Mike Ward, Bill

Halloran, were all people that I knew before I came

to OSEP.

I had felt as a local director and

previously a teacher of kids with disabilities that I

was a consumer of OSEP\'s products and good offices.

As a local director prior to coming to OSEP, I was

Associate Superintendent of Schools in Chicago and I

could see as a local director the important impact

that OSEP made on making my job, which was a very

difficult job, a little easier.

Specifically in the areas of research and

technical assistance, I felt that I benefited

tremendously by the work that OSEP was doing at the

time around the education of children with severe

emotional disturbance, a very neglected group of

students, and OSEP had taken a strong lead in

improving services for those kids through research

and technical assistance.

I also benefited very significantly from

the state systems change grant and inclusion. When I

came to Chicago in 1990, it was almost a totally

segregated system for children with disabilities,

very inappropriately segregated, and the statewide

inclusion grant helped tremendously in moving the

system forward.

I also benefited enormously from the

wonderful work that parent training centers did in

Chicago in educating parents of kids with

disabilities in Chicago, and I benefited quite a bit

from the transition work that OSEP was doing at that

time.

So when I came to the federal government,

I strongly believed in both the capacity of OSEP and

the important it had. I also believed in the

importance of a strong federal role in special

education. When I entered the field, there wasn\'t a

federal special education law. I remember the days

when thousands of kids were in institutions. I also

remember the days when parents were turned away from

schoolhouse doors and refused access to any education

for their children with disabilities. That didn\'t

change, from my perspective, until a strong federal

role was established in special education.

So when I came to OSEP in 1993, I

considered it a great honor to have been offered the

job, and I look forward to assuming the position.

Like all political appointees, I believe, I came with

a lot of ambition. I had some thoughts about what

needed to be reinforced, but also what needed to be

changed. As a special educator, as I mentioned

before, I felt pride in the progress that we had made

in this field over the 20 or so years before I took

the position at OSEP.

However, I felt that we had a long way to

go, that we had yet to reach the point and we still

have yet to reach the point where children and

families get what they need for their children with

disabilities naturally. Specifically, some of the

issues that I felt very strongly about is I felt

strongly that we needed to move more aggressively in

the area of inclusive education. There has never

been data that supports the segregation of children

with disabilities. The data is quite the opposite.

And I also felt philosophically and

continue to feel philosophically that children with

disabilities should be part of their communities and

be part of their schools and have the natural access

to education that all children should be assumed to

have as a right.

I also felt as many people, I was very

pleased to hear the testimony of two very excellent

state directors of special education. As many people

in the field felt and feel, I felt the field needed

to move toward a greater outcome orientation than it

currently had. One of the first experiences I had

when I came to work for the federal government was

being called to Secretary Riley\'s office in which he

asked me how well the kids with disabilities did on

the NAEP, the National Assessment of Educational

Progress. And I said, well, Mr. Secretary, I can\'t

tell you that. And he said, well, Tom, would you

come back and give me a report? And I was sweating.

This was one of my first meetings with

Secretary Riley, a truly wonderful man who I have

developed a strong friendship with. But I really

didn\'t know him at that time. And I said to

Secretary Riley, no, Mr. Secretary, I can\'t provide

you with that report. Not a good thing to say to

your new boss. And he said, well, why, Tom? Why

can\'t you do it? And I said because the kids with

disabilities weren\'t part of the NAEP. And he was

incredulous. Secretary Riley had been a governor of

a state. He didn\'t come with an educational

background. But from his perspective, how could you

assess what\'s happening with American education and

keep 11 or 12 percent of the kids out of the

assessment measure?

So like all of us, like Alice and Barbara

said before, and like I think probably many people

have said to this Commission, I\'m very pleased today

to say that that has changed. That we have at least

begun the very difficult work of including kids with

disabilities in accountability systems.

I also felt when I came to OSEP that we

needed to work at more aggressive ways of bringing

research to practice. I\'ve always been and continue

to be kind of a research junkie. However, what I

realized was that many of the practices in the field

were not consistent with research. That there was

knowledge out there that could better improve what

was happening to children with disabilities, and I

felt that needed to happen.

And lastly, I felt and continue to feel

that the federal enforcement role in special

education had to be stronger. That we just couldn\'t

allow the implementation of this law to be based on

good will. That there are instances where, and there

continue to be instances where there are large

numbers of children who are not getting their very

basics. I\'m not talking about reams of paperwork.

I\'m talking about the very basics of access to

education.

So when I came to OSEP with these

wonderful ambitions, I found that my ambitions were

easier to articulate than to necessarily implement.

And I think all administrators feel that in these

types of situations.

When I looked at what my goals were and I

looked at what was achievable, I basically felt that

there were three obstacles to achieving some of the

things I talked about today. One was statutory. The

second was organizational, and the third was

political. And I\'d like to speak about all three of

those today. Because when you look at OSEP and you

look at how it functions, all three of these

dimensions are important. That what OSEP does or can

do is heavily influenced by all three of these, and I

hope I make this clear today how these things

interact.

In the area of research to practice, one

of the things that struck me when I first came to

OSEP which frankly I didn\'t quite appreciate when I

was in the field, was the fact that the research

program in OSEP came from eight separate authorities

with an additional six set‑asides within those

authorities.

So what happened was, there were some

disability areas that were covered, some age groups

that were covered. There were some disability areas

that weren\'t covered. There were some age groups

that weren\'t covered, and the net result of that was

that there were small pots of money all over the

place, and the ability to have a strong research

program and technical assistance program I felt was

inhibited by that.

Also, on the area of outcomes, I felt when

I started looking at OSEP\'s role in monitoring the

states and enforcing IDEA and assisting the states in

doing a better job, because those things have to go

together, I found that many of the things I would

have liked to have done in the monitoring system

couldn\'t be done because there was no statutory

authority in the old IDEA to take a look at outcome

measures. It didn\'t exist. And if it doesn\'t exist,

OSEP can\'t do it. If it doesn\'t exist in law, if you

do not have the authority to do something with the

states, you can\'t do it. That\'s basic federalism.

So those are some of the statutory things.

Organizationally, what I found when I came to OSEP

was that there are 107 people assigned by the

department but there were relatively few people doing

the direct work of the organization. There were

almost as many supervisors as there were workers,

which is not desirable in any organization.

And that organization may have been put in

place for all the best reasons. I really wasn\'t

interested in history. What I was interested in is

looking at putting together an organization that

would make more sense.

We did do a reorganization of OSEP to

focus our staff much more closely on the mission of

the organization, which is monitoring and improvement

at the state level through knowledge development and

technical assistance that\'s developed by the

discretionary program. Essentially, those are the

two big things that OSEP does. It oversees the

implementation of this law, and it develops knowledge

and provides technical assistance through its

discretionary programs.

And so we moved OSEP from five divisions

to two divisions. We eliminated bureaus and we

eliminated two layers of management in the process.

And staff at OSEP of course had to adjust to all of

that, but I think actually people were happy to

adjust to that, because the existing structure was

not lending itself to efficient operation.

On the statutory level, in the 97

amendments to IDEA, Congress in I believe its wisdom

consolidated the discretionary programs and created

five more powerful authorities on a more tightly

focused federal role. And these authorities were

research, technical assistance. It\'s one thing to do

research, it\'s another thing to get technical

assistance out to the field, and I was very pleased

to hear Alice and Barbara talk about the regional

resource centers, the outcome center and so forth and

how important technical assistance is in the field.

Technology. One of the things that has

happened in the time that I\'ve been in this field

that has really struck me is the tremendous advances

in technology that benefits children with

disabilities. This technology is expensive to

develop. It\'s unlikely to be developed strictly on

market forces, because oftentimes relatively few

people use these technologies, although sometimes

they become profitable. So again, we felt that the

federal role to develop these technologies and keep

moving them out was important.

Teacher preparation. People have

mentioned before and continue to struggle with the

growing problem of staffing special education‑related

services in the field and the importance of having a

federal role there.

And finally but by no means list, the

importance of parent education. That one of the

things we know from research, from the National

Longitudinal Transition study, is that active parents

have a positive impact on results of kids with

disabilities, and that\'s keeping a lot of variables

constant.

We felt that, again, and Congress agreed,

and Congress consolidated these authorities to really

focus on a tight federal role. And that was a very

difficult thing for both Congress to do and for the

Administration to approve, because all of the

existing system all had special interests attached to

these little pots of money. It was a very, very

difficult thing to do. And fortunately, we did it.

So I think that OSEP is in a much better place to

provide the appropriate support to the Part B program

through the Part D program.

Politically. One of the nice things about

being a private citizen again is that I have my First

Amendment rights, and I don\'t have to say the

position of the Clinton Administration is ‑‑. But

politically, one of the things that impacts what OSEP

does is the political leadership of the department at

the time, as well as the Congress. That one can\'t

ignore the political aspect of this job. And indeed,

the political powers that be can greatly enhance the

implementation of this law or can inhibit it.

From my perspective, one of the main

criticisms that OSEP has and of course there were

several criticisms today and I\'m sure there have been

others, the National Council on Disability, for

instance, did a study that criticized the enforcement

of IDEA. And I think it\'s important when you look at

the enforcement of IDEA to understand how politics

plays out in this arena.

The two state directors that presented to

you all this morning talked about having conditional

awards on their grants. One of the things that we

realized when we came on board, Judy Heumann, who was

the assistant secretary, and myself, was that we

could find very little evidence in previous

administrations of any forceful enforcement of IDEA.

It wasn\'t there in any way that you could really see.

We felt very strongly that this had to

change. When we did our first conditional award,

which was to the state of Pennsylvania, immediately

we received letters from the Congress from the two

senators from Pennsylvania as well as several of the

congressional delegation basically telling us to back

off. And the reason I\'m saying this is to emphasize

that these things all work together: The statute,

the organization and the political climate. And I

think if this panel is interested in making, which I

know you are, in improving the education of children

with disabilities, you have to consider all three of

those.

One of the other things in relationship to

the area of enforcement that I think is important

that Congress also did in the \'97 amendment is it

provided an array of tools that the administration

and the state can use to enforce IDEA that didn\'t

exist under the previous law. One of the reasons I

believe the previous administrations and why at times

we, meaning the Clinton Administration, were

reluctant to engage in enforcement activities was

that our enforcement tool was largely withholding all

the funds to the state.

We attempted that in one state, in the

state of Virginia, over the issue of exclusion of

disabled children, and we got letters from parents in

Virginia saying what are you doing? This is taking

services away from my kid? Which is much of what

Alice said before. When you take all the money away,

the hurt goes everywhere. Under the \'97 amendments

to IDEA the Congress provided the administration with

additional tools of partial withholding, for

instance, which I again would assume will be valuable

for OSEP in the future.

I am now back as a consumer of OSEP\'s

products. I am not a customer. I think it\'s

important to distinguish between consumers and

customers. Customers from my perspective are

children with disabilities and their families. I am

a consumer. I\'m someone who provides services to

kids with disabilities, indirectly, by teaching

general educators how better to serve these kids, and

I do not have a child with a disability nor do I have

one myself.

In the area that I work in now, which is,

as I mentioned, higher education, I teach two courses

at Harvard. One is called Students with Disabilities

in School and the other is called Implementing

Inclusive Education. And as I mentioned before,

probably 80 percent of the students in my classes are

going to be superintendents, principals, general

educators. And I am very fortunate in this role to

have available to me many excellent products that

have been developed, funded through Part D of IDEA.

My students, for instance, read the work

of Doug Fuchs on treatment‑resistant kids. It\'s one

of the major issues that people are facing now,

particularly in relationship to what I consider to be

a very positive direction of this Administration on

focusing on early reading. But what we know from the

research is that there is a percentage of kids who

are treatment resistant. Well, those kids I believe

are kids who have learning disabilities. And the

importance of focusing on the needs of these kids as

well as doing what the Administration is doing is

critically important.

The work that Doug Fuchs and other people

have done in this area is extremely informative to my

staff. Also in this area, my students are very much

impressed by the work that was done by the National

Research Council on preventing reading difficulties

in young children, which again was largely funded,

not exclusively, but was largely funded on OSEP

resources.

Another book that I use in my class is

called Restructuring High Schools for All Students.

This is written by Cheryl Jorgensen and a number of

her colleagues, Cheryl Tegis at the University of New

Hampshire. And what Cheryl pulled together were a

number of OSEP projects that have looked at the very

difficult issue of the inclusion of kids with

disabilities in high schools and has done an

excellent job of looking at the fundamental issue

around inclusion, which is diversification of

instruction.

My general education teachers in the class

feel that this was one of the best things they\'ve

read on that issue, not just on the issue of

integrating kids.

In addition to that, my students benefit

very much from the work of the Outcome Center given

the importance of standards‑based reform. There are

a number of things that they read that Martha Thurlow

and her associates have put together from the Outcome

Center.

So again, I feel very strongly about the

role that OSEP has served and continues to serve in

producing meaningful technical assistance and

meaningful research for my students, and I appreciate

it.

I would hope this Commission would be

looking, and I know you are, at the future of what

the role of the federal government should be in the

implementation of IDEA. I believe that one of the

things that you\'ll bump up against is the relatively

small commitment to Part D in relationship to

financial resources in relationship to the overall

enterprise.

I just got another wonderful product that

came across my desk from one of OSEP‑funded projects

by Chambers and Parrish on how money is spent in

special education, which is extremely valuable for us

to understand these sorts of things.

And one of the things that this study has

shown is or they estimate that the amount of money

that\'s being spent on special education, amount of

public money ‑‑ federal, state and local ‑‑ is

approximately \$50 billion. Now I think that\'s a good

thing. I think it\'s good that we have resources

directed towards the education of children with

disabilities. But I also feel very strongly that

there are lots of ways in which those resources could

be used much more efficiently if guided more

appropriately by research.

The current Part D allocation is a very,

very small percentage of the overall enterprise of

special education. If you look at Part D as the

research and development arm of a \$50 billion

corporation, you would have to conclude that it is

puny.

One of the things that struck me about

this when I was at OSEP, probably mid‑term at OSEP,

we had a research conference at Gallaudet University

in which we brought together the top researchers in

the area of deafness. And it was a wonderful

conference. As you probably know, the educational

attainment level of deaf children is way too low,

approximately on average for a high school graduate

about 4th to 5th grade level. That the issues around

language and education that are so complex with deaf

children clearly require more research.

When that conference was concluded and the

top researchers in deafness got together and came up

with the final report, it would have consumed every

dime of Part D. Deaf children represent a very small

percentage of children served under IDEA. There are

13 categories served under IDEA, and they have very

diverse needs. The needs of emotionally disturbed

children are very different than the needs for deaf

children or the needs of blind children. It\'s a

highly diverse group of kids, which means that the

support programs in my view should be addressing

those small populations of kids because if the

federal government doesn\'t do it, nobody else is

doing it, as well as the larger groups of kids like

kids with learning disabilities and kids with mental

retardation.

So in the future what I would suggest the

Commission support would be greater funding for

discretionary programs under IDEA.

One of the other things that I would

suggest, particularly given the presentation that

Alice and Barbara just did ‑‑ and we didn\'t talk

before, right, Alice? Is the importance of the state

improvement grant effort. That we need to be looking

at ways in which to leverage change at the state

level.

And the Congress, again in its wisdom, put

a new program under IDEA which has been very popular

in the field, of looking at ways to systemically

improve special education to improve outcomes for all

kids. So I would particularly support that.

I also feel that there is a need for OSEP

and the Congress and the Administration to address

the issue of teacher shortage in special education

far more aggressively. One of the things that we are

well aware of is not only do we have a shortage of

folks who want to do the wonderful work of being a

special ed teacher. I always loved it. We have not

only a shortage of people going into the field, we

have an exodus out of the field. And we should be

looking very much at why those things are happening.

One of the issues that a number of people

have brought up and I would agree with is that many

teachers just don\'t want to do paperwork. If

teachers wanted to do paperwork, they probably

wouldn\'t have entered into teaching. They probably

would have become accountants or lawyers. What

teachers like to do is teach. And the amount of time

that people are spending in paperwork is

considerable.

But I think it\'s important to recognize

that paperwork just doesn\'t come from the federal

government. When I was working at OSEP, indirectly I

worked for three governors. Deputy Secretary Kunin

was the former governor of Vermont. Secretary Riley

was the governor of South Carolina, and then the

President was the governor of Arkansas. And the

advantage and disadvantage was that they were all

governors of small states. They knew special ed.

They knew quite a bit. But one of the things the

knew about special ed was this paperwork issue, which

many of you have talked about.

Specifically, when I was at OSEP we looked

at two states in relationship to this issue of

paperwork. One, Vermont, because that\'s where

Governor Kunin had most recently been. And the other

was Pennsylvania, because Mr. Goodling who was

chairman of the Education Committee at that time,

asked us to do that.

And one of the things we realized when we

looked at paperwork was that a significant amount in

both of these states, close to half of the paperwork

that was required by providers in the field were

required by states and local school districts that

were beyond what was required under IDEA.

So I think this issue needs to be

addressed, but it needs to be addressed in the spirit

of partnership as Alice and Barbara said before.

I also feel that something that could

greatly help the issue of teacher shortage would be

loan forgiveness for people going into special

education. This would probably require statutory

effort on the part of the Administration, but it\'s

been done before. It\'s been effective in having

people enter the field, and I think it would be

effective as well.

I think it\'s also important in the area of

teacher preparation to be looking at a very focused

role for teacher preparation for the federal

government. In the last reauthorization, I think

there was very strong language on the nature of this

role. The federal government through its current

small, small teacher preparation program, which is

only about \$90 million, cannot subsidize the

preparation of all special education teachers in the

United States. We estimated when I was there that

the teacher preparation program provided about \$19

per special ed teacher in the United States. You

don\'t prepare anybody, you don\'t even do in‑service

on \$19 per person.

So this role needs to be focused. It

needs to be focused in my view on leveraging better

teacher preparation of special education and related

services personnel, not just subsidizing the existing

system. And I feel very strongly about that.

Also, the last reauthorization recognized

that in the area of low incidence disabilities, in

the area of doctoral preparation, that there is

essentially a market failure. For instance, in most

states, there is not a great enough demand for

teachers of the blind for states to have programs for

teachers of the blind. And I think that that\'s where

the federal government has a much greater role than

maybe it\'s currently assuming.

I also would support and continue to

support what has been happening in the last few years

and I believe needs to continue to happen is

expanding parent training under IDEA. The parent

training centers are a tremendous resource. Informed

parents move this system forward. There is no

question about it. And parents who understand both

the nature of this very complex law as well as the

nature of their children\'s disabilities are far

better able to advocate for what their children need.

I would also recommend very strongly that

you support the role of enforcement. That along with

developing partnerships with states that there must

be a balance between these two things. And one of

the things that continually concerns I think many

people in this field is the uneven implementation of

the law from local educational agency to local

education agency. Parents in one town should be able

to get basically what their children need. They

should not have to move.

Last, I would like to suggest that from my

perspective, this Commission and I hope the new

Administration would be supportive of the wonderful

people who work at OSEP, particularly the career

leadership. JoLeta Reynolds, Patty Guard, Lou

Danielson and Ruth Ryder are some of the finest

public servants you will ever meet. They work very

hard. They\'re very competent, and they\'re ethical.

And I would strongly suggest that whatever this

Commission does, it recognizes the importance of the

career staff at OSEP.

I want to end with an anecdote, because I

think most people who have heard me are probably

shocked that I haven\'t presented an anecdote yet. I

used to do that in OSEP all the time. I had a young

girl present to my class last night who is a high

school student in Massachusetts who has severe

cerebral palsy. She has benefitted by technology

that has been developed by OSEP.

She has benefitted by the existence of a

federal law. A girl with her level of disability,

when I started up in this field, may have very easily

been institutionalized. She has to communicate

through a computer. She can\'t speak. She has passed

the MCAP exam in Massachusetts, which is a very high

level exam, and she has one of the highest math

scores in her high school. And she spoke eloquently

to my class through her computer on the importance of

inclusion, the importance of high standards for kids

with disabilities.

But like so many stories of successful

kids with disabilities, the glass is really half

full. Because in order for this child to get this

education at this wonderful high school outside of

Boston, her parents had to move. Her parents got

sick of trying to convince their local district that

their daughter was intelligent, that she should have

access to the curriculum. That the fact that she

could not speak did not mean that she was

intellectually disabled.

So that points out the importance of the

enforcement role in making sure that every school

district in the country does what\'s right. One of

the things that the school district that she lives in

now is faced with is the fact that parents of kids

with disabilities are moving in droves to that school

district, because the surrounding districts are not

doing what they should be doing, which is a failure

of an enforcement system from my perspective, and

it\'s unfair for that community, simply unfair for

that community, to bear the financial cost of this.

This is a big financial cost.

Also in relationship to this particular

child, although she has benefitted by some of the

technologies provided by OSEP, there are many more

technologies that could make things much more

efficient for her in the future that we need to

envision. And also her mother benefitted

tremendously by her training she received at the

Parent Training Center in Massachusetts, but I see

far too many parents who are unable to access that,

not because the parent training centers aren\'t

willing, because they\'re underresourced.

So I\'d be glad to answer your questions.

I thank you for inviting me here today, and I thank

you for your support for improving education for

children with disabilities.

DR. COULTER: Thank you, Dr. Hehir. I

like a lot of people, very much appreciate you coming

today and speaking. I also was I think witness to

one of the first times you spoke after you left OSEP,

and I will never forget your comment about the glee

with which you were able to talk, as you said, with

your First Amendment rights restored. So we\'re going

to take advantage of that this morning.

(Laughter.)

DR. COULTER: And I\'m going to turn you

over to Commissioner Berdine.

MR. BERDINE: Thank you, Alan. Appreciate

it. Tom, it\'s nice to see you again. It\'s been a

while. And as you can imagine, my interest is in

personnel preparation. We\'ve had a number of

conversations in the past with regard to that issue.

One of the documents you did not mention

which you probably signed off on was an OSEP document

that\'s recently come out about the shortages of

higher education personnel. And it\'s fairly clear,

it\'s something I wish you would share with your class

at Harvard, because I think it has significant

implications, implications both for higher education

charges as well as direct services providers.

I have three questions which should be

very specific, relatively short answers I believe.

With regard to funding in the area of personnel

preparation and your concern about Part D which you

know that I share and a number of my colleagues

share, how do you feel about indexing Part D to all

the federal funding for Parts B and C? Could you

make a recommendation with regard to that?

DR. HEHIR: I would support that. I did a

piece for the Center for Education Policy that you

might want to look at where I argued for that

position.

Again, if you look at special education as

\$50 billion enterprise and you also look at the fact

that most, not all, but most of the research and

technical assistance and parent training and so forth

comes from the federal government to enhance the

implementation of this major enterprise, one of the

things that I think is very important is to have

predictable resources that having an annual

appropriation. One year we got zero out of the

House. Fortunately, the Senate came to our rescue.

But one year we got zero in research. And one of the

things I used to say to people who would ask me about

this when I had many sleepless nights was, you know,

since the time that we got that zero before the

Senate restored the money, thank the Lord, I did not

get any major corporations writing to me saying I\'m

going to make up the difference.

This is an appropriate federal function.

Having, number one, a larger base, but that is very

clearly focused on a federal role, not just throwing

money at things, but is focused on a federal role

that\'s appropriate, as I believe the current statute

is.

Having a larger base is critical and

having a predictable funding sources predictable for

people who are conducting large‑scale research,

people who are operating technical assistance

agencies, people who are running parent training

centers.

MR. BERDINE: With regard to the payback

provision, you mentioned that you would support that

for teachers. Is that support found for a higher

education persons going into special education,

doctoral students?

DR. HEHIR: I would support that, but I

would like to see a stronger federal role in that.

Because one of the problems with doctoral training is

that even if you have loan forgiveness in the future,

four or five years of paying tuition is very, very

difficult for people to contemplate, particularly in

a strong job market.

We\'re fortunate at Harvard. Right now at

Harvard I have 15 doctoral students at Harvard who

are primarily interested in disability work, which

I\'m very, very pleased that they\'re there. And we\'re

fortunate in that we do have some resources that are

from the university, but we\'re the wealthiest

university in the world where we can subsidize a lot

of these but not all of these doctoral students.

So I would like to see ‑‑ I think they

should be applicable to the loan forgiveness, but I

also would like to see more grants directly to

universities to support the preparation of doctoral

candidates.

I also however feel that we need to look

at the doctoral programs that we have, as we need to

look at the teacher training programs that we have.

One of the reasons that many people come to Harvard,

which does not have a special education program, but

we do integrate the issue of disability into the

curriculum, is that they feel in order to exercise

leadership in this field, they have to have a broader

array of skills. If they\'re going into

administration, for instance, they really have to

know issues of policy broadly. That\'s particularly

true with the EFCA. You can\'t look at special

education as a free standing program. You have to

look at it in the context of the overall system.

So I think in addition to funding more

doctoral folks, I know this sounds awful in some

people\'s mind, not in my mind, there should be

strings attached, that these programs should be high

quality programs that train folks to look at a much

broader field, but keeping the integrity of making

sure that they know the stuff they need to know about

disability.

MR. BERDINE: Thanks, Tom.

DR. COULTER: Commissioner Takemoto?

MS. TAKEMOTO: As an executive director of

a Parent Training Information Center, I just want to

publicly disclose that I did not talk to Dr. Hehir

before this. But I absolutely do believe in the

power of Parent Training Information Centers and the

power of families and systems change.

A couple of administrations ago in the

former Bush Administration, Secretary Owens really

pushed the expansion of services, particularly for

PTIs and not necessarily in universities, for serving

more traditionally underserved families. That\'s

something that you and Judy carried forward in yours.

And I saw sort of an activist role for you and Judy

in terms of putting strings on funding that had to do

with you had people with disabilities, minorities,

family members on review teams, much to the dismay of

many university recipients of your services.

We are now at a time where we have again

an activist administration who really is pushing high

accountability, no children left behind, no kids

excluded because of behavioral or disability,

whatever. So we have an administration with the will

to do what it takes. What is your advice to the

OCERS/OSEP leadership in taking the activist role?

They have limited control over funding, but they do

have control over what strings they attach to states,

localities, funding. What would be the role for OSEP

in carrying out this Administration\'s activist agenda

in good results for children with disabilities and No

Child Left Behind?

DR. HEHIR: Are you talking about D&B?

Broadly speaking.

MS. TAKEMOTO: Tell me ‑‑ specifically

speaking, what are some steps? And I do believe it

does involve everything. But tell me what advice you

would have for the leadership at OSEP in terms of

using their roles in an activist agenda to carry out

this Administration\'s emphasis on results for

children?

DR. HEHIR: I think there are a number

of things that can be done. One, I would hope that

there would continue to be an inclusion of customers

and consumers in the monitoring system and in the

award of discretionary money.

I think that one of the things that we

know about this particular law is that the law didn\'t

happen because a group of school administrators got

together and said let\'s do a strong federal role in

special education. The law happened because a group

of parents got together, not just a group, many

parents experiencing the same thing from state to

state developed what was a visionary law then. It\'s

a visionary law today. And so one of the things that

I teach my students is, if you\'re going to implement

inclusive education, you don\'t do it without the

parents. You have to do it with the parents.

So I think the same thing is true with the

monitoring system. I think the monitoring system

should, number one, include both parents and people

who have disabilities, adults who have disabilities,

who may have gone through the special education

system, may have had a positive experience, may have

had a negative experience, but they bring reality to

the situation.

I also think in the monitoring system they

should include local teachers. I think increasingly

we\'re leaving the teachers out of the equation here,

and I think that they need to be part of that.

I think in Part D it\'s important to

continue the effort of consumer and customer

involvement in the awarding of grants, but that is a

very difficult thing to achieve because you need to

make sure that if you\'re looking at a research grant,

for instance, that is technically sound, that the

best research design, for instance, gets the award.

And that requires sometimes, that may require

consumers who might also be wearing another hat, that

have expertise in particular areas. And that\'s

something that I think is particularly difficult to

balance at times, but it needs to be balanced.

Other types of awards may not need such

level of expertise, and being able to make those

distinctions between types of awards I think is a

critical aspect of what the staff at OSEP needs to be

able to do.

MS. TAKEMOTO: Thank you. And I also want

to call your attention to the fact that in addition

to the strides in technology and educational

practices, OSEP has taken a leadership position in

bringing more parents, minorities, people with

disabilities into the field where we are much better

equipped and have much more qualified folks involved.

So thank you and your predecessors for that too.

DR. COULTER: Commissioner Sontag?

DR. SONTAG: Good morning, Tom.

DR. HEHIR: Good morning, Ed.

DR. SONTAG: It\'s good to have you here.

Tom, let me just ask a pretty broad general question.

There seems to be, which is a phrase for I don\'t have

a lot of good data, an increase, a modest increase in

litigation but an enormous increase in legal fees.

DR. COULTER: Ed, use the microphone.

DR. SONTAG: Could you hear the question,

Tom?

DR. HEHIR: Yes, I could hear the

question.

DR. SONTAG: Okay. That was the first

part of it. Are there ways that we could reduce the

legal costs and make sure that more money is actually

floated to the classroom? I see more and more firms

specializing in special education law and rarely do

they represent parents.

DR. HEHIR: I think there are some things

that can be done. If you look at most states, there

are not a lot of due process hearings. Big exception

is the District of Columbia that I don\'t want to get

into this morning because I\'m doing some work with

them in trying to fix that.

But in most states it\'s a relatively small

percentage. There is, I believe one of the things

that could help the most is if there was more

consistent implementation from LEA to LEA. The LEA

that I talk about where this young woman went has not

had a due process hearing for I think she said three

years, and she really doesn\'t spend much on attorneys

at all, the special ed director in that particular

district, and this is in a district that has a

significant percentage of its population as upper

middle class folks who tend to be the people who have

access to attorneys.

Neighboring districts might not have the

same story, but they may not have the same programs.

And the parents have this vehicle in the law which I

support very strongly, which is to challenge the

placement that a school district is offering. And so

I think that better federal and state enforcement

would be a way to break this down. Also encouraging

more mediation. Most parents do not want to go to

due process hearings. And so encouraging mediation

is I also think an important thing.

I also think some training of local

administrators on how to avoid litigation. THere are

some people who feel the first thing you do as a

local administrator is call the lawyer, not call the

parent. And immediately set up an adversarial role

between the parent and the school district.

There are other administrators like the

woman I\'m talking about in this community who the

first call is to the parent, and she hardly ever

calls a lawyer. And so I think that there could be

some training done of local administrators on

nonadversarial ways of coming to grips with parents

essentially.

DR. SONTAG: I want to revisit the issue

of teacher training briefly. Enormous needs for

trained classroom teachers of students with

disabilities, enormous needs for the training of

regular educators who deal with students with

disabilities.

Let\'s assume that we\'re not going to have

four‑fold, five‑fold increases in funding. Are there

ways that you would suggest that OSEP could change

its funding strategies and its priorities in the area

of personnel preparation that could better meet the

growing need for more teachers?

DR. HEHIR: Boy, that\'s a good question.

I think the best thing that could be done on this

issue, short of what I said, was looking at ways to

retain the teachers that we have. It\'s very

expensive to produce new certified teachers. And

when we lose maybe 50 percent within four years,

focusing on the 50 percent I think is important.

And ways at looking at encouraging the

efforts to retain special education teachers, looking

at ways to work with showing models within school

districts, school districts where special education

teachers are happy with their jobs and are staying

with their jobs, and promulgating those types of

models I think would be very important.

A big part of this problem is that the job

becomes intolerable for people. It\'s the paperwork

issue, it\'s the isolation issue that principals in

schools will for instance not order materials for the

special education teacher. It\'s the lack of

collegial relationships with other teachers. Some

school districts have done an excellent job at

keeping their special ed teachers.

There\'s a school in Boston, for instance,

called the O\'Hearn School, which is an inclusive

school. I know the school well because I used to be

director of special education in Boston and when the

principal came with a proposal to develop the school

back in 1987, it was extremely visionary. And

basically what he said was, Tom, if I had all the

money you\'re spending on special ed kids in my

neighborhood and if I had greater flexible use of my

Title I resources, I could provide two teachers in

every classroom. And I\'m appropriately named Thomas.

He had to show me. And he had worked it out on

paper.

And so we gave Bill Henderson, who is

still the principal at that school, a green light to

go forward, which has become a very effective

inclusive school in Boston. This was a school that

was a low performing urban elementary school.

Parents didn\'t want to send their kids there,

teachers didn\'t want to teach there. Now in that

particular school, he has a stack of resumes for both

special education teachers and general education

teachers in that school. He has no difficulty

filling his vacancies in the school. He also has the

highest test scores in the city of an elementary

school.

So, again, I think OSEP could be doing

some things in this area of saying this is how you

keep people happy with this job. And there\'s a lot

that school administrators can do, like Bill

Henderson has done, to make this a wonderful job

where it isn\'t now in many places.

DR. SONTAG: Thank you. My last question

deals wit what has been referred to as one‑size‑fits‑

all special education classrooms. One of the

strengths of the law that\'s been there since 1975 is

the IEP. But on another hand, it\'s also a weakness.

Because at the beginning of the school year, a

teacher is presented with 12 to 15 somewhat different

IEPs. A classroom teacher may or may not be equipped

to deal with the varied instruction that\'s called for

in those items.

Is there a better way that we could link

up individual names with a classroom profile? In

other words, should we not look through that process

somehow that who is the best teacher for Johnny as

opposed to the teacher being preordained? And that

this teacher has these kind of teaching styles, these

kids have these kinds of learning styles. I was

wondering what your thoughts might be on that.

DR. HEHIR: I think there are ways we can

do the IEP better, but I don\'t think that we should

ever be looking at kind of taking some teachers off

the hook for educating kids with disabilities and not

kind of forcing the issue.

Ways in which I think the IEP could be a

more effective document, and I think this really

needs to happen, is to have the IEP much more an

access document. What does this child need to be

able to access the general education curriculum?

Does this child need accommodations? Most children

with disabilities you should be talking about

accommodations first. What are the accommodations

this child will need to access the science curriculum

at the sixth grade when he\'s still reading at the

third grade level? And that needs to be

straightforward in the English language that a

teacher can understand.

Some children with disabilities because of

the nature of their disabilities need modifications

in the curriculum. Generally children with mental

retardation need modifications in the curriculum

because they have mental retardation. So the IEP

should also address how the general education

curriculum can be modified for a child with a

disability.

The third thing that the IEP should be

looking at is addressing the unique needs that arise

out of the child\'s disability. There are unique

needs that arise out of a disability that are not

part of the curriculum but that the child needs

addressed in order to have educational equity. The

curriculum doesn\'t usually, although in some places

it does, teach American Sign Language, but a deaf

child may need to have his ASL vocabulary vastly

expanded if he\'s going to access the curriculum.

So these are the three things in my view

that an IEP should meet.

I think the IEP also needs to be in a

sense a contract with the parent, as it currently is,

that says this is what we will do for your child in

order to achieve these three things. And if we focus

the IEP on that, I think it would be a much stronger

document than it is today. And I think it\'s moving

in that direction, but I think there\'s a lot of

confusion. I think some people still look at it as a

cook book, lots of short‑term objectives, which

oftentimes reduces the curriculum to its lowest

level, not moves the curriculum forward to the notion

of high expectations for kids with disabilities.

So that would be my suggestion, Ed.

DR. COULTER: Commissioner Pasternack?

DR. PASTERNACK: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

First, Tom, good morning. I have to state for the

record that I\'m sorry that you felt that you gave up

your First Amendment rights during your tenure. I\'d

also like to state for the record that during this

Administration clearly I haven\'t given up my First

Amendment rights nor have I been asked to do so, and

I think that this President and this Secretary

encourage us exercising our First Amendment rights.

DR. SONTAG: A bipartisan comment here.

I\'ve been where Tom\'s at. He speaks the truth on

this.

(Laughter.)

DR. COULTER: Commissioner Pasternack?

DR. PASTERNACK: Next question. The first

question I\'d like to ask, Tom, is why hasn\'t more

research gone into practice?

DR. HEHIR: Why hasn\'t more research gone

into practice? I think that\'s a very complex issue.

I think some of it has to do with the culture of

education, that educators are not trained to value

research. That oftentimes education programs kind of

deal with, you know, kind of low level stuff around

20 ways to teach long and short vowels as opposed to

why is it important for children to have,

particularly kids struggling with reading,

appropriate phonemic awareness? Why are you doing

this in the first place?

So I think some of it has to do with the

broad culture of education. Educators don\'t sit

around reading research journals.

I also think the researchers often do not

produce products that make sense to people that are

in the classroom. They\'re often looking at a

relatively small number of issues, and they often do

it in such a way that they equivocate all over the

place and people say, well, where\'s the beef?

I think there are some things that have

been done that have been different from that, that

have shown tremendous results. I think today one of

the things that I find very positive about what both

the Administration has done and the awareness in

school is on the early reading research.

I remember when I first was in this job

and I was exercising my First Amendment rights at

this point, but it wasn\'t contrary to what the

Administration was saying, so I was very pleased to

say it. I don\'t know if Alice was there. I spoke

out in California to the state CEC convention. This

was before you were director, Alice. And I talked

about the research that was emerging from people like

Reed Lyon, Jack Fletcher, Sherry Barnes and people

like Joe Torgerson on early reading, and the

importance of phonemic awareness for kids with LD. I

got a standing ovation.

And I said, you know, I wasn\'t that

witty. I mean, I\'m talking about research here.

What I didn\'t realize, and I got some very negative

views from the then‑administration of the California

Department of Education. They were looking at me as

if I had committed a big sin. But at that time in

California, there was a mandatory, dogmatic approach

to reading that didn\'t allow for this type of

instruction. The special education teachers knew

because they worked with LD kids what the reality was

of LD kids learning how to read, that they don\'t

intuit how to read.

And what happened since then that has

changed those policies throughout the whole country

was a rather significant research to practice effort

that the previous administration led in uniting the

research from NIH with the research on education on

early reading. And that\'s continuing. I think,

Jack, you\'re one of the authors on this piece,

Rethinking Learning Disabilities, that Reed Lyon ‑‑

Jack, you are one of the authors on this piece. I

use it in my class. It is a brilliant piece, from my

perspective, of bringing research to teachers.

When my students read that piece of

research they go, wow, this makes sense. So we need

to be looking at ways in which the National Research

Council study, Preventing Reading Difficulties in

Young Children, is the biggest seller that the

National Research Council has ever had. I was on a

panel recently dealing with Social Security

eligibility for people with mental retardation, and

one of the people at NRC said to me, the reading book

just surpassed the pig book. And I said, what? And

she said, well, Tom, Preventing Reading Difficulties

in Young Children is now our biggest seller. Our

previous biggest seller was on pig nutrition that the

National Research Council had done which every pig

farmer in the world had read because it impacted

their income.

And so the reading book has now surpassed

the pig book. So those efforts are the sorts of

things that you need to be looking more at. You need

to be looking at more high profile things that get

into the media, that get into teachers\' hands and

parents\' hands.

DR. PASTERNACK: I guess I\'m troubled by

the fact that the initiatives that you just mentioned

are not out of OSEP, out of Research to Practice

Division, and that was kind of what I was getting at

with that question.

DR. HEHIR: No, that\'s not true. That\'s

not true. The reading initiative, the public

relations efforts that pulled all this research

together, was done in collaboration between the

Research to Practice Division and NIH. Learning to

Read, Reading to Learn, which was the beginning of

the kind of public awareness effort that occurred.

And much of the research that is in the

NRC study was more than 50 percent funded by Part D

resources. And the design of that study was very

heavily influenced by OSEP staff.

DR. PASTERNACK: All right. That\'s good

to hear. I guess I want to turn to compliance for

just a minute. As you know, the National Council on

Disability, in their report, said that no state is in

compliance with the IDEA. How do you think OSEP can

achieve increased compliance and perhaps assuring

that every state does ensure that there is compliance

with the IDEA?

DR. HEHIR: I think that that is a

daunting task, to tell you the truth. Everybody I

think in this room would like to see higher levels of

compliance for IDEA. I think it\'s a combination of

enforcement and partnership. I think it\'s working

with states, you know, as Alice and Barbara said

previously, of bringing the best practice to the

states, who has the best solution to this issue of

teacher retention. Who has really done a great job

at dealing with treatment‑resistant kids. And

bringing that to the states and the states having the

vehicle to bring it to the LEAs.

Once of the things that Alice mentioned in

her speech, and I don\'t know the condition of your

First Amendment rights, Alice, but the fact that

California only retains three percent of its state

grant money is a huge problem for implementing IDEA

in California, because there isn\'t the

infrastructure, in my view, although I think Alice

does a terrific job, believe me. I\'ve seen what

change has occurred in California since she\'s taken

her job. There isn\'t the infrastructure.

Some states have good infrastructure.

Texas has a wonderful infrastructure with its

regional centers and so forth and so on. I do a good

deal of training in Texas. They have a wonderful

infrastructure.

So I think maybe looking at requiring ‑‑

and this would have to be statutory ‑‑ requiring the

states to have a particular type of infrastructure

that enables the states to assist the local education

agencies. You should always assist first, in my

view, before you enforce. And allows the SEA to give

strong assistance to the LEAs, particularly the LEAs

that are struggling.

But also it is important that there is

enforcement there. When this isn\'t going well,

something happens that\'s more significant, and that

has to start with the federal level with looking at

states and looking at what they do well, what they

don\'t do well, and maybe exercising greater, after

you\'ve assisted them, greater enforcement power.

So again, I think that\'s a piece of it.

This is a state grant program. IDEA is a state grant

program. That assumes the states have the structure

to be able to do this. Some states have much better

structures to do this than others, and you see the

difference. And so again, I would ‑‑ I very much

like what Alice said in her last remarks about the

three percent being a real problem. Congress allows

them to use 25 percent of their \'97 allocation ‑‑

allows them to use ‑‑ plus inflation.

But many state directors don\'t have any

access to that money because there\'s such an effort

to get things down to the local education agencies.

I think that can be penny wise and pound foolish

ultimately in terms of the appropriate implementation

of this Act.

I also like what Todd was saying before.

The states should pony up some money for this. The

federal government isn\'t the only one having an

interest in appropriate implementation of this Act at

the state level. So I think that there is an element

there that I think could help.

DR. PASTERNACK: I know time is getting

away, Mr. Chairman. Just one quick question.

DR. COULTER: Yes it is.

DR. PASTERNACK: You\'ve written eloquently

and spoken eloquently about the wait to fail model

that currently exists in LD. I believe one of the

things you\'ve often said is that we wait while they

fail. Why didn\'t we change that during your tenure?

Why do we continue to have a set of guidelines which

emphasize a wait to fail model?

DR. HEHIR: In terms of the LD definition?

DR. PASTERNACK: Yes.

DR. HEHIR: Well, I don\'t know. Jack, you

may recall this meeting that we had in OSEP prior to

developing the Administration\'s proposal for

reauthorization. I would have, you know, having been

someone who had worked in the field for a long time,

having worked with LD kids, I think this is a central

issue, and I am thrilled that this Administration is

dealing with it as straight up as you are.

But the actual definition of LD, when I

called Dr. Lyon and Dr. Fletcher and a number of

people, Bonia Blackman, there are a whole bunch of

NIH researchers that came into my office, and I said,

could you come up with something else at this point?

And people did not feel comfortable doing that at

that time. The science wasn\'t as developed as it is

now in 1994.

I don\'t know what the replacement is as

far as LD. I tend to believe that ultimately, at

least for reading and language‑based learning

disabilities, that the ultimate determination of who

is LD should happen after there has been a pretty

intensive early intervention. You don\'t need

advanced diagnostics to determine who\'s not reading

at the first grade level. You ask the teachers and

they\'ll tell you, or you just simply use the reading

measures you would normally use in the first grade

and you can tell who those kids are.

The current direction of the

Administration in this area in my view is the right

direction. But ultimately, as we know from the

research, even with the best early reading

interventions, the most scientifically based early

reading interventions, there\'s a group of kids that

are going to come out of the third and fourth grade

who are treatment resistant. Those kids are the LD

kids, and I think that may be the better way

ultimately to define certainly language‑based LD.

Number one, the assumption that kids have

available to them interventions and that, you know,

bells and whistles go off when a kid is not learning

how to read in the first grade, not the fourth grade,

and that you use these types of interventions that

have been so well developed in the research now, and

now is very much a part of public policy and I

applaud that.

But ultimately recognizing that ‑‑ one of

the things that I find a little problematic when

people talk about LD, they talk about it as if all

you got to do is go and remediate it. There\'s enough

evidence today to show that there are significant

numbers of kids who are going to have reading and

language problems all the way through school even

with the best interventions, and those are the kids

who should be getting services under IDEA.

DR. COULTER: Commissioner Fletcher?

DR. FLETCHER: Just to follow up on that

question, I was pleased to hear that you were using

research that was funded through OSEP on treatment

resisters and so on in your class, but I wanted you

to know that we heard testimony in Nashville that in

essence we don\'t know a thing about dealing with

treatment resisters, and because of that we shouldn\'t

change federal regulations around children with

learning disabilities. And I just want to document

for the record that essentially that\'s not your

testimony.

DR. HEHIR: Well, again, I\'m not sure I

would advocate today changing the regulations unless

you have something better to take its place. It\'s

one thing to have in ‑‑ one of the other things, Bob,

that we did that we were not successful in doing was

we proposed and we did not get through the Congress

in \'99, no it would have been the 2000 appropriation,

a discretionary program that would seek to provide

the sorts of early interventions that the research

would say is necessary, and we didn\'t get it.

But what is being advocated now by the

Congress is not necessarily what\'s happening in

schools or being advocated by the Administration,

being advocated by President Bush, is not necessarily

what\'s happening in schools. And until you have

those systems in place, to some extent, the existing

regulations provide for a fallback when school

districts don\'t do what they should do in terms of

providing these early interventions.

So I\'m not sure, unless I could see, and I

haven\'t seen it from anybody, a better definition of

learning disabilities to be put into the regulations.

I would agree with what that testimony is in

Nashville. Just because you don\'t change the

regulations doesn\'t mean you can\'t do a whole lot to

address this issue, and you are doing a lot to

address this issue.

DR. FLETCHER: But that wasn\'t really my

question. My question was really this idea that we

don\'t know anything about dealing with treatment

resisters. I gather that it was sufficient that you

would actually use these materials in your class and

saw it as a fairly substantive contribution that OSEP

had already made in terms of identifying treatment

resisters and developing interventions for them and

things of that sort. Isn\'t that correct? Isn\'t that

what you said?

DR. HEHIR: Yes. And what I would say we

know about, about treatment resisters, is on one

level doesn\'t require any more research, which is if

you don\'t read by the time you\'re in the fourth

grade, you\'re disabled.

DR. FLETCHER: Right.

DR. HEHIR: There\'s no question about

that. By any kind of definition of disability, if

you look at a major life function. A major life

function of children is to read. So if you\'re not

reading by fourth grade, you\'re disabled.

Now if you have all of these wonderful

interventions in kindergarten, first, second and

third grade, and I would say that you have to start

interventions with some kids long before kindergarten

if you particularly talk about not just the issue of

whether a kid learns how to decode, but also the

issue if kids can ultimately comprehend, which is a

language issue. And if you look at the fact that

there are many kids, there\'s huge disparities between

the language development of some kids and other kids,

which ultimately impacts comprehension, that you\'ve

got to start at the third grade.

However, if you provide these

interventions and the kid is treatment resistant, one

of the things that kid needs in my view is an IEP.

DR. FLETCHER: Yes.

DR. HEHIR: And that IEP should be very

clear about how this kid is going to access the

curriculum, given the fact that reading is not his

strong suit. He needs to learn math. He needs to

learn science. He needs to learn social studies,

and there are lots of ways to accommodate a kid in

the curriculum who doesn\'t read well.

DR. FLETCHER: Right.

DR. HEHIR: So I would disagree with that

piece of it. I think we know a lot of what we need

to do with treatment‑resistant kids, which is to

provide them with ‑‑ there\'s a lot more we need to

know, but we need to provide them minimally with

access to the curriculum, assuming the nature of

their disability.

I also think, Jack, that with these kids

who have not read by fourth grade, that we need to

continue to provide them with direct services in the

area of reading.

DR. FLETCHER: Yes. Absolutely. And in

fact we know how to do that.

DR. HEHIR: And that should be part of

their IEP too. And we know more about how to do

that.

DR. FLETCHER: Right. And so I think

that\'s probably a good example of what you described

as the tendency of researchers to equivocate about

how much we know and when things should be

implemented.

But I want to shift back to the, you know,

you were talking a little bit earlier about the

meeting that we had about changing the definition and

early intervention services and things of that sort.

And I wanted to remind you that one of the upshots of

that meeting was essentially this group that you

convened, and I was always pleased that you had

convened that group. I thought it reflected the

wisdom that you continue to exhibit about children

with disabilities.

But we were essentially told that the

provision of early intervention services through

OSERS was not something that OSERS would consider

because it\'s an agency that serves children with

disabilities. And I was wondering if you agree with

that position, given your First Amendment rights now.

DR. HEHIR: Well, to some extent at that

meeting what I was reflecting was the then‑statute.

To some extent the current statute. I believe that

special education money should be much greater than

it is. This is where my First Amendment rights, and

I don\'t know if this will affect Bob, but I certainly

believe in the 40 percent commitment.

DR. FLETCHER: Sure.

DR. HEHIR: And that\'s not something,

believe me, when the President sends up 10 percent

and you believe in 40 percent, I didn\'t say 40

percent because I\'d probably be out of the job. And

that\'s where the First Amendment inhibition comes in,

and I think that\'s completely appropriate. You\'re

part of an administration, you work for that

administration. Nobody\'s forcing you to work there.

But assuming this much larger pie of

federal commitment to special education, which I

think the Congress very much wants to do, some of

that money should be able to be used for the types of

things you\'re talking about without having to give

kids disability labels. And I agree with that.

DR. FLETCHER: My point was simply that to

a certain extent, any effort to redo the definition

and so on was derailed at that point because of that

particular concern, which I understand.

DR. HEHIR: I think you\'re right. That

was a piece of the concern. Most of the LD advocates

were very, very uncomfortable opening that

definition. I think one of the things that in the

field of LD we have struggled with as long as I\'ve

been in the field is people recognizing that these

kids exist.

And so tampering with that definition

could have been a very, very negative thing for the

kids who have LD.

DR. FLETCHER: Right.

DR. HEHIR: Because I believe that

definition, as imperfect as it is, is a safety net.

DR. FLETCHER: Right. I have to ask one

other question.

DR. COULTER: Quickly.

DR. FLETCHER: I know you\'re trying to

move on, Mr. Chair. But I just wanted to ask, you

know, given the description that you had earlier of

the relationship between OSEP and NICHD, the

Commission asked OSEP to provide examples of their

collaboration with other federal agencies, and there

was no mention of any relationship with the NICHD

Center for Mothers and Children, which includes Reed

Lyons\' branch as well as the mental retardation and

developmental disabilities branch. And I had the

impression personally that there\'s very little

interaction between the Research to Practice Division

and those particular divisions of NICHD.

Are you essentially saying that\'s not the

case and that there is substantially more

interaction?

DR. HEHIR: Well, I can speak to when I

was at OSEP. And there was collaboration not just

with Reed, which I considered one of the most

satisfying collaborations that I had at OSEP, because

I felt that the research that Reed and folks like you

have done for him ‑‑

DR. FLETCHER: As well as people at OSEP.

DR. HEHIR: As well as people with OSEP,

really has moved the ball forward. We wouldn\'t be

talking about some of these issues of treatment‑

resistant kids and early intervention for kids and

phonemic awareness without that research. I feel

very, very satisfied in that.

We also did a significant amount of

collaboration on children with attention deficit

hyperactivity disorders and various efforts to get

the research out on those disorders.

We did significant collaborations with the

Center of Mental Health Services on Community of

Caring Grants. Gary DeCorlis over there. Can more

be done? Sure, more can always be done.

Collaboration is a difficult thing. But I feel that

we should always be looking at these intersections to

make sure that we\'re benefitting the most by the

federal contribution.

DR. FLETCHER: Thank you.

DR. COULTER: Thank you, Dr. Fletcher.

Dr. Hehir, I think you heard earlier Commissioner

Sontag speaking to the lag time between when OSEP

visits a state and the production of the report on

that visit. And I think we all understand one of the

most fundamental things to change behavior is to get

timely feedback.

Can you help us understand ways in which

we could improve or make recommendations regarding

OSEP\'s improvement so that reports get issued in a

more timely manner? I mean, 18 months to two years,

which is the current data that we have on reports

getting out. That certainly isn\'t anything that\'s

going to stimulate change. What will get reports out

quicker?

DR. HEHIR: I agree with you. The reports

have to get out quicker than they have in the past.

I think the thing that would get them out quicker is

if they touched fewer hands. OSEP exists within a

pretty large bureaucracy at the Department of

Education and I felt very strongly that there were

often reports that I would see within two months that

I would sign off on that the staff at OSEP had

produced that touched so many hands after it left my

office, and many times when it was state of

negotiation around this finding or that finding and

is this really what the law provides for, et cetera,

et cetera.

I think empowering OSEP to be able to

produce its own reports without a lot of other hands

touching it would be central to that effort. And

again, I think if you look at the people who are at

OSEP, if look at Ruth Ryder, if you look at JoLeta

Reynolds, they know the law better than anybody I

know.

So it would be one thing if there wasn\'t

the expertise within the organization, but there is

the expertise within the organization. The question

is the number of hands it touches when it leaves

there. And some of the hands it touches are people

who are very much higher up in the organization and

don\'t have a lot of time to attend to this sort of

thing. But they have a lot of power. They have the

power to be able to sit on something for three

months, four months. And then Alice is back in

California saying, gee, I want to move with this

stuff and she can\'t move with it because she doesn\'t

even have the report.

DR. COULTER: Once again, I think we\'ve

heard a lot of testimony speaking to the positive

nature of a partnership and working towards

compliance. The question I\'m going to ask you is in

no way to diminish the fact that there are lots of

possibilities when people have a constructive

relationship.

Let me now turn, however, to those very

rare instances where sanctions are required, and I

think you mentioned three examples where sanctions

had been attempted, only one of which, at least

during your tenure, was actually successful in going

through in terms of looking at the limited sanctions

that you had.

I\'d like for you to respond to two

questions actually as it relates to sanctions. One,

within the current structure of either the Department

of Education or the federal government itself, and we

have the National Council on Disability which has for

instance suggested about maybe moving monitoring and

enforcement out, completely out of the department, or

maybe somewhere else within the department.

Speak to structurally what would lead to

more effective enforcement. And secondly, what other

tools, what other, besides withholding part are all

of the money, what other things do you think would

make this law more easily enforceable, not just

implementable, but enforceable?

DR. HEHIR: I would like to correct the

record. There were several states in which we did

conditional approvals when I was at OSEP, and there

was one state, actually two states in which we ‑‑ one

state where we went to withholding, another state

where we sought withholding in the state. Actually

two states, three states. And the state at the

eleventh hour came around.

DR. COULTER: Well, Dr. Hehir, I think I\'m

referring to you mentioned Pennsylvania, an example

that a number of us are aware of.

DR. HEHIR: Right.

DR. COULTER: And I think you used as an

example the political factors, I don\'t want to say

intrusion, political factors that inhibit

enforcement. So ‑‑

DR. HEHIR: I think that on the

enforcement issue, I think that the degree to which

an administration and Congress ‑‑ and Congress ‑‑

support enforcement is largely a political issue. I

think that\'s too bad on one level, but that\'s the

nature of our system. And so I think, number one, if

the Administration is really clear about when it

enforces, and I don\'t think we were ever that clear

about when we enforce, but if up front the

Administration said, if the following things occur,

this is when we move to enforcement, and then we move

to enforcement using less restrictive means than full

withholding as you move along.

In other words, there\'s a continuum of

enforcement. I think that could be articulated and

that would help. But I think ultimately, the

Administration and Congress has to support the notion

of enforcement, which our administration did. We did

support the notion of enforcement, although at times

it was difficult to sustain that, given the political

climate.

I think in terms of the law, I think that

there is sufficient legal ‑‑ I don\'t think the law

needs to be touched in this area. I think that there

is sufficient tools available to the Administration

now and to Congress to enforce. I also think,

however, if you look at what ultimately is going to

help, what I said before about making sure the states

have the infrastructure to be able to implement this

law would probably be the most important thing you

could do.

DR. COULTER: Structure. Is the current

structure the best structure for ensuring

enforcement, or should enforcement be moved somewhere

else?

DR. HEHIR: I think enforcement should

stay in OSEP. I don\'t know where else it would move.

I think one of the things that needs to be recognized

with IDEA, it\'s a civil rights law, yes, but it\'s

also a state grant law, that there is additional

requirements that go far beyond civil rights that

IDEA seeks.

It is also, as I mentioned before, a state

grant law, so that the existing monitoring system has

been one that\'s been developed with that in mind. In

other words, it monitors state agencies. There

aren\'t any other comparable education laws that quite

work that way. And so again, I wouldn\'t recommend

that at this time.

Do I think there needs to be more

collaboration with OCI? Yes. I think that that has

always been a difficult thing. When you are getting

to things that are really clearly civil rights

issues, in other words where both 504 and ADA are

relevant, then I think there should be some joint

activities. We did some when we were there. We did

some with New York City, for instance, with the

regional office in New York City with the New York

City public schools. We did quite a bit on the issue

of overplacement of minority kids in special ed, but

I think there can always be more of that.

But I think monitoring of IDEA should stay

in OSEP. It also should be connected to the

discretionary programs.

DR. COULTER: Dr. Hehir, I want to thank

you very much for your indulgence both in terms of

the amount of time we took with you and getting

started late, and I also want to thank the indulgence

of the speakers that are about to follow you because

we are running on.

So if you would, our three speakers that

are scheduled next, would you please come up?

DR. HEHIR: Alan, I will be presenting my

written testimony to you next week.

DR. COULTER: Thank you very much. We

appreciate that.

Members of the audience, I\'d like to

introduce to you three speakers who are going to

address a topic called Consumers: Improving Special

Education Through the Office of Special Education

Programs ‑‑ What Works and What Can Be Improved.

To address that topic we have three

speakers. We have Paula Goldberg. Ms. Goldberg is

the Executive Director of the Parent Advocacy

Coalition for Educational Rights, affectionately

known as PACER. PACER is based in Minneapolis,

Minnesota, and its mission is to expand opportunities

and enhance the quality of life of children and young

adults with disabilities and their families, based on

the concept of parents helping parents.

We also have with us today Leslie Seid

Margolis. She is the Managing Attorney of the School

House Discipline Project at the Maryland Disability

Law Center. The Maryland Disability Law Center is a

nonprofit corporation established by federal and

state law to advocate for the rights of persons with

disabilities in the state of Maryland.

And third, we have Richard \"Dick\" D.

Komer, who is the Senior Litigation Attorney at the

Institute for Justice based in Washington, D.C. He

litigates school choice cases and employment

discrimination cases in both the federal and state

courts. And folks, I want to thank you for your

attendance and your patience with us. This is a very

important topic. Ms. Goldberg, you\'re on.

MS. GOLDBERG: Thank you very much,

Chairman Coulter. I\'m very pleased to be here today.

I am Paula Goldberg, Executive Director and a founder

of PACER Center in Minnesota. PACER was among one of

the first parent training and information centers,

and we were funded by OSEP in 1978 along with PTSI

also.

DR. COULTER: Paula, speak directly into

the mike so that the audience can hear you.

MS. GOLDBERG: Okay.

DR. COULTER: Thank you.

MS. GOLDBERG: Actually, OSEP clearly took

a risk and a new direction in funding parent centers

in the seventies, and they have been a remarkable

success in promoting parent involvement and parent‑

professional partnership.

I am also Co‑Director of the Alliance

Project, which is funded by OSEP to provide technical

assistance to the 105 parent training and information

centers and community parent resource centers, which

I will refer to as parent centers, throughout the

country.

Today I\'m going to talk briefly about

three things. One, the important role of the PTIs

and the community parent resource centers and share

the evidence of their success and the data. Make

recommendations to about OSEP regarding our

experience. And three, make recommendations from

parent centers regarding compliance and other issues.

For more than 20 years, PACER has been

involved in helping other parent centers across the

country and also helping families. Since 1997, PACER

has been the national coordinating office for the

technical assistance alliance for parent centers, or

the Alliance. I want to personally thank Donna

Pflug, who is our project officer at OSEP for her

important help and support as well as acknowledge the

dedication and commitment of the parent centers where

a majority of the staff are parents of children with

disabilities.

During the past 23 years with PACER, I

have seen both the best of times and the worst of

times. It is the best of times because we have seen

the number of parent centers grow from a small

handful to 105 and one in every state at least. This

means help for thousands of parents who care deeply

about education for their child with a disability.

Parent involvement is recognized as a major

cornerstone of education and one of the four pillars

of Secretary of Education Paige and an important part

of No Child Left Behind.

Study after study describes the importance

of parent involvement in the success of children in

schools. I don\'t know how many of you saw 60 Minutes

last Sunday night, but they demonstrated the

importance of parent involvement in achieving

educational outcomes for children. It was quite a

demonstration of success with military families

actually.

More children with disabilities are

graduating from high school and taking jobs. There

are amazing success stories for children with

disabilities because of IDEA.

It is the worst of times because there are

still children with disabilities who are not

receiving a free appropriate public education. The

education system is not working for them. I will

relate one recent call we received at PACER. Tom is

17 and lives in rural Minnesota. He had received

special education for many years. His mother called

PACER stating that her son was not learning and was

spending a lot of time with the janitor, which she

didn\'t understand. When we asked for copies of Tom\'s

IEP, the mother said she had not been invited to an

IEP meeting in three years,.

When she requested copies of the IEP at

PACER\'s request, she discovered, one, that the

teacher had forged the mother\'s name on the last

three years of IEPs. Two, the school had changed

Tom\'s diagnosis from learning disabilities to mental

retardation without the mother\'s knowledge or

consent. And three, Tom\'s main goal on the IEP was

to work with the janitor most of the day. The second

goal was to learn to value the library 76 percent of

the time.

This is a horrific story from 2002. The

teacher has been suspended and the PACER staff person

continues to work with the parent and with the school

to help that student.

What do parent centers do? They help

families make informed decisions that result in

appropriate education and services for children with

disabilities, work to improve outcomes in education

for all children, to educate and inform parents and

professionals, resolve problems between families and

schools, and connect children with disabilities to

community resources.

We want to share with you the importance

of the parent center system or parent training

system. As a part of the Alliance technical

assistance grant, we developed a plan to help the

parent centers collect data. We just finished a

report that documents four years of work of the

parent centers. For the first time we have collected

data from almost 100 parent centers. Professor Susan

Hazazzi from the University of Vermont has worked

with us and helped us with the process and report the

data.

Last year the parent centers served almost

one million people, which is an average of nearly

10,000 people per center. Also, 68 percent were

parents and 32 percent were professionals. It is

significant to note how many professionals attend our

trainings that call for information. We do support

parent‑professional collaboration. We believe this

to be a tremendous value for the dollar.

Two. The parent centers serve a

representative and large number of racially and

culturally diverse families. The numbers have

increased. Thirty‑nine percent of persons attending

trainings were from racially and culturally diverse

families, and 31 percent of persons calling for

assistance were from racially diverse families. This

data is impressive, and it is representative of the

number of diverse families in the general population

and also in special education.

As an example, 50 percent of the staff of

the PTI in Iowa are racially diverse. At PACER we

have staff who are American Indian, African American,

Hispanic, Southeast Asian and Somalian to help

individual families.

Three. Parent centers serve children and

youth with ages and disabilities across a spectrum.

They respond to the father whose newborn child is in

the neonatal intensive care unit and calls every day

for two weeks for support, and to the parent of the

21‑year‑old who calls about employment issues, and to

the parent whose child has just tried to commit

suicide and has no place else to call.

The outcome data, which I really want to

share with you, is important. Almost 5,000 parents

were randomly selected and called last year by

independent individuals to assess the effectiveness

of the parent centers six months after they attended

a training or called for help. Five thousand parents

represents a large number.

One. For parents attending the training,

67 percent of the parents stated that their child

received more appropriate services as a result of

using the information from the training. Eighty‑six

percent felt more confident working with the schools,

and 93 percent were more involved in their child\'s

educational programs.

Two. For parents receiving individual

help over the phone, which we spend a great deal of

time doing, 84 percent of the parents received some

of the services their child needed, and 88 percent of

the parents felt more confident in working with the

schools.

Three. Parent staff attended more than

11,000 IEP meetings with families where they help

resolve issues. Additionally, parent centers

disseminated 1.5 million newsletters and had 3.5

millon contacts through Web sites, for a total of 5

million people.

We have been told that this data is

impressive. These statistics are only possible

because of the type of people who work at parent

centers. They are passionate, driven, caring people

who work very long hours and have a mission because

they understand what it is like to be a parent and

have a vision of the future.

Parent center recommendations. Parent

centers are vital to so many families. Parents tell

us that procedural safeguards need to be maintained

in the law. Teacher training and writing IEPs and

knowing the law is critical. LEA monitoring and

compliance are necessary for both outcomes and

procedures and a strong state compliant system is

vital.

One. Parent centers are very cost

effective and are an important investment. Parent

center staff often resolve conflicts and

miscommunication between parents and schools. This

saves school districts and states thousands of

dollars that may have been spent on hearings and

litigation.

Parent centers are underfunded, and many

cannot even afford basic health benefits for their

staff. Yet they perform a vital role and have proven

outcomes.

Parents centers help with systemic issues

and build capacity at the local level. We hear that

there is an increasing demand for services. We

recommend increasing resources for parent centers to

\$50 million this year and \$10 million each of the

next five years. With 6.4 million children receiving

special ed services, the current \$26 million for the

PTI line item amounts to only \$4 per child. The

parent centers need more funds to serve more

families, help resolve more conflicts and help

improve outcomes for children.

We recommended, number two, some

additional new services in addition to the current

ones for parent centers. They would include:

1\. Transition and rehabilitation.

2\. Early childhood, including transition

information for families.

3\. Mediation attendance with parents and

juvenile justice issues.

And the last one, early intervention and

early reading.

We recommend OSEP require pre‑service, in‑

service development that includes collaboration with

the parent centers and as a criteria for funding. We

recommend that OSEP have parent centers as a part of

all task forces, review panels, research projects,

SIG projects and other OSEP programs.

And a few quick recommendations based on a

national survey from the National Coalition of Parent

Centers on compliance.

Mediation. We recommend changing the law

in IDEA to make state‑supported paid mediation

available at any time if a parent requests it, not

only after a complaint requesting a due process

hearing is filed, which is the current law now.

Two. Due process hearings. We recommend

that OSEP be required to keep data on the number of

hearings, mediations and facilitated IEP meetings

held in each state and fund aa study to look at

states that have high and low numbers of due process

hearings.

We recommend research in how alternative

dispute resolutions are working. Last year there

were only 3,020 due process hearings at Level One in

this country. Seventy‑two percent were from five

states. Twenty‑one states have fewer than 10

hearings a year. Thirty‑three states had less than

20 hearings a year. With 6.4 million children, that

is .0004 hearings per child which is clearly a small

number.

Three. State complaint procedure. We

recommend strengthening the state complaint procedure

by, one, requiring states to strictly comply with

timelines, monitoring and enforcing findings and

corrective action plans. And we view state complaint

systems as a viable alternative for due process

hearings for families. And we also would like to see

the complaints publicly stated as well as the

resolution.

In a recent survey, 78 percent of the

parent centers reported that their state complaint

system is not working. In Minnesota, our state

complaint system does work, and it benefits all.

And lastly, IEP. We strongly support

keeping the short‑term objective to help parents and

teachers know where the student is progressing. We

strongly support keeping the annual IEP as a tool for

learning with outcome. It is the heart of IDEA.

We recommend that OSEP develop a model

that includes outcomes. When we look at No Child

Left Behind, how will we know if we have left a child

behind if we don\'t know where we are going? Annual

IEPs, short‑term objectives and annual goals provide

a map to the future with accountability.

I hope in the next five years we will be

able to say these are the best of times for all

children. Thank you very much.

DR. COULTER: Ms. Margolis?

MS. MARGOLIS: Thank you. Good morning.

My name is Leslie Seid Margolis. I\'m a Managing

Attorney at the Maryland Disability Law Center, which

is Maryland\'s protection and advocacy agency.

I\'ve been with MDLC since 1985 and have

represented numerous children with disabilities in

individual special education cases and class

litigation as well as in juvenile court foster care

proceedings.

I\'ve also spent a great deal of time

working on policy issues at the local, state and

federal levels. I chair a statewide special

education advocacy coalition looking at policy issues

throughout Maryland. We\'ve got roughly 25 members.

And I also chair a national advocacy work group

devoted to the issue of IDEA monitoring and

enforcement, and I believe that\'s probably the reason

I\'m here today.

I really appreciate the opportunity to

testify this morning regarding the Office of Special

Education Programs, and I need to say that my

perspective is based not only on the many years that

I\'ve worked on special education legal and policy

issues but also on my status as the parent of a

nearly eight‑year‑old child with severe physical and

cognitive disabilities who is fully included in a

regular education program in Baltimore City.

My interest in special education at the

federal level was sparked by a 1989 monitoring report

issued by OSEP to Maryland that was one‑and‑a‑half

pages long and declined to identify any violations.

Over the course of inquiries and later litigation

under the Freedom of Information Act, we learned that

OSEP in fact had prepared a report making numerous

findings of violations but that Maryland had objected

to that report and the two agencies had essentially

negotiated the report away.

I think our experience in Maryland became

a rallying cry for change to the monitoring process

and ultimately a monitoring oversight committee was

set up by OSEP in the early 1990s. I was a member of

that committee and roughly maybe ten years ago, I was

asked to speak at one of the meetings. I stated that

monitoring is meaningless without enforcement. Since

that time, numerous changes have been made to the

monitoring system by OSEP, but I think the statement

is just as relevant today as it was ten years ago,

and I\'m going to repeat it: Monitoring is

meaningless without enforcement.

Twenty‑five years after the IDEA was

enacted, we are still struggling to ensure that the

law is implemented at all, let alone effectively, for

students in every school district in the country.

Part of the problem is inadequate monitoring and

enforcement at the state level, and part of the

problem is a federal monitoring system that sweeps

too broadly, focuses too much on procedures and too

little on substance, fails to produce timely

monitoring reports and engages in enforcement action

only rarely and inconsistently.

The problems with federal monitoring have

been persistent enough and pervasive enough that a

few years ago a number of advocates from protection

and advocacy agencies and national disability and

education groups joined together to determine a

course of action that would result in meaningful

change. It\'s this process and the resulting work

with OSEP to develop a focused monitoring system that

I would like to talk about today.

To be perfectly candid, when our work

group first began to meet, we were focusing our

efforts on whether we should sue OSEP for failure to

effectively monitor and enforce the IDEA. But to

dispel the notion that lawyers always want to

litigate, I will say that we asked ourselves what we

wanted to get out of litigation. And what we wanted

was a monitoring process that actually worked.

So we set ourselves the task of trying to

come up with one, and we developed a framework for

what we have called focus monitoring. The essence of

that proposal that as a broad, as we\'ve

conceptualized it, is that a broad group of people

would identify a few significant priorities. Those

aspects of the IDEA that if they were really

implemented would make a difference for children.

And it\'s those priorities that are monitored using a

databased, verifiable system, providing supports in

capacity building, and that\'s a very key part of what

we\'re advocating, and then when necessary,

utilization of sanctions.

In our view, though, the quid pro quo for

a narrower, sharper focus on a small number of

priorities is meaningful enforcement that results in

implementation of those priorities. And I use the

word \"implementation\" rather than compliance, because

I think that for whatever reason, the word

\"compliance\" has become synonymous with procedural

requirements. I think that is an overly narrow,

erroneous way of defining the term. In fact,

compliance with the IDEA means implementation of the

IDEA and all its substantive as well as procedural

requirements. And I really think that as the

Commission does its work, it\'s important to dispel

this very narrow definition of compliance that\'s come

about.

We approached OSERS with our framework and

we had several meetings, the outcome of which was

OSEP\'s agreement to participate in a series of

meetings with a very broad group of stakeholders, as

OSEP has termed us. Beginning in November of 2000

and continuing with small work group meetings that

will culminate in a full stakeholder group in June of

this year, we filled in many details of a focused

monitoring system that relies on data for

decisionmaking purposes.

We have identified possible OSEP

interventions ranging from technical assistance to

sanctions, along with a system for how the

determination of what level of OSEP intervention

would take place. I\'ve brought copies of the current

draft of our proposal. They should be attached to

the copies of my testimony. But note that this

proposal will be revised very shortly to include a

sanctions protocol as well as additional information

involving Part C.

I think that I speak for other advocates

and parent members of our stakeholder group when I

say that we\'ve been very pleasantly surprised by how

far we\'ve come. I don\'t think any of us expected

when we began the meetings with OSEP that we would

actually have a proposal that we could circulate that

all of us could agree to, but we think we\'re pretty

much there.

OSEP staff have participated meaningfully

in our meetings. They have provided us with

information that has helped us craft a proposed

system, and we think that it would truly make a

difference for students if it were implemented. But

‑‑ and there always is a but ‑‑ I have to say that

now that we\'ve gotten to the point where our system

could be implemented, at least on a small scale, I am

concerned that OSEP may lack either the ability or

the will to make the system real.

At heart, I think I and others are

concerned that focus on a small number of priorities

would be readily embraced by OSEP but that the other

essential piece of our proposal, which is the

enforcement piece, will not be so easily adopted and

exercised.

I am somewhat encouraged by the very firm

position that OSEP took in my own state at our last

steering committee meeting when OSEP was very clear

about the need to do business differently and to

consider enforcement actions against local school

systems. But the gap between talking about

enforcement and actually engaging in it sometimes

seems like an unbridgeable chasm.

I understand that OSEP has to function in

a world that\'s very full of political pressure and

fraught with the tension that comes from having to

have a cooperative relationship with the people that

OSEP is charged with oversight responsibility of.

But to preserve any level of credibility with

advocates and parents, and much more importantly, to

enable the promise of the IDEA to be fulfilled by

true implementation of its requirements, OSEP has to

put that last piece of the monitoring system in place

and use its enforcement authority in accord with the

provisions of the system we have laid out or in

accord with another system that\'s subjective and that

people understand clearly.

I\'ve said this before and I will say this

again, it is unconscionable to acknowledge as the

previous Assistant Secretary of OSERS did, that

parents are the primary enforcers of the IDEA and

then fail to act to change that situation.

Enforcement responsibility rightfully belongs to the

Department, to states and to local school systems. I

am cautiously optimistic that OSERS and OSEP

recognize the responsibility and that the work of our

group will result in meaningful changes in the

quality of special education through an effective

monitoring and enforcement system, but we\'ve been

poised at this brink before. And as a special

education attorney and as the parent of a child who

is dependent upon IDEA for her education, I truly

hope that this time OSEP will be able to bridge the

gap between talk and action.

I urge the task force to recommend the

adoption by OSEP of the focus monitoring system that

includes a database examination of priorities and

enforcement to ensure implementation of those

priorities.

I want to thank you again for the

opportunity to testify. And at the conclusion of our

panel, I\'d be happy to address any questions you may

have. Thank you.

DR. COULTER: Thank you, Ms. Margolis.

Mr. Komer?

MR. KOMER: First I\'d like to thank you

for inviting me to be on this panel. I have perhaps

as completely a different perspective on these issues

as is possible since I don\'t work with OSEP. I

haven\'t worked with OSEP for almost ten years. I

haven\'t missed not working with OSEP for the last ten

years.

But first let me just summarize my

background. For 14 years after graduating from law

school in 1978, I worked in a variety of the federal

civil rights agencies. I started at HEW before there

was a Department of Education, then I worked at the

Department of Education, then I worked at the Civil

Rights Division at the Department of Justice and then

at the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission for

one of my longer stints, five years.

I then returned to OCR in 1990 to the

position that C. Todd Jones currently holds.

Throughout that time, my primary energy went into

disability issues, because when I started, Section

504 was just in the process of being implemented and

the IDEA had been recently revamped, including

incorporating and elaborating on the draft provisions

from the Section 504 regs on elementary and secondary

education.

In 1993, the Clinton Administration\'s

arrival gave me the opportunity to pursue other

endeavors and since then I\'ve been a part time

attorney working at the Institute for Justice where

virtually all of my time is spent promoting school

choice initiatives, ranging from vouchers through

charter schools on the other hand.

As a result, my contact with the IDEA has

been essentially from a kind of legal policy point of

view, which is how to incorporate into school choice

initiatives equal opportunities for disabled students

and their families to participate in those sorts of

initiatives. As a result of the six current voucher

programs in the United States, one, in Florida, is

exclusively limited to children eligible for special

education, and all of the other five have unusual or

special provisions for addressing the needs of

individuals needing special education.

That occurs in a context, though, of a

larger attempt to provide parents with greater

choices and opportunities in pursuing education,

typically nonpublic alternatives, although as all of

you I assume are aware, charter schools are in fact

public schools and raise special IDEA questions which

we occasionally address.

But mostly what we deal with is

individuals who want to opt out of the public school

system because they I believe reflect what I think is

an unusual dichotomy or conundrum, which is at the

same time that we\'ve made incredible strides in the

time that I\'ve been working during my working life,

which spans from 1978 till today, we\'ve made

incredible strides in special education and in

serving children in need of special education, the

overall performance of the American education system

has in fact declined and declined steadily.

And it is in the context of trying to

reverse that overall trend that the Institute for

Justice advocates increased competition and increased

opportunities for all parents to make use of other

opportunities besides monopolistic public schools.

As a result, the people that we deal with,

the people who are our clients in school choice

litigation, are people who want out of public

schools, people who believe that their children have

been misidentified as in need of special education,

people who believe that they need a different

environment for their children because the public

schools have become increasingly characterized by

disruption and inadequate education.

As a result, from our perspective, the

issues that OSEP should probably focus attention on

are the extent to which special education

requirements may be contributing in any way to the

issues of the failure of public schools to be able to

maintain adequate discipline, the ever apparent

increasing expansion of the number of children in

special education, in particular the category of

people labeled as learning disabled and who because

of that label may in fact be diverting resources away

from more severely disabled and clearly disabled

children who need greater services, and the issue of

accountability of why children are not learning in

general, not just learning disabled kids.

One of the things I was interested to note

the previous speaker discussing was the fact that

California with its emphasis on whole language had

managed to fail because of that emphasis on

addressing early reading needs. That issue was not

limited to kids with learning disabilities. It of

course had substantial impacts throughout the state

of California on their performance on tests and on

the ability of kids to learn to read. I think that

that\'s a very good example of the issue of the

overall concern that we have for public education and

its impact on the subset, which is the kids in need

of special education.

Finally, in order to let you ask

questions, I\'d just like to address the one issue

which is the suggestion that enforcement

responsibilities be removed from OSEP and placed

somewhere else, particularly the Department of

Justice. As Dr. Hehir mentioned, the IDEA is

relatively unique among federal statutes. It is in

fact a grant statute as well as having civil rights

aspects. From my perspective as somebody who spent a

lot of time enforcing civil rights statutes,

particularly Section 504, a statute like IDEA should

not be enforced outside of the area of the agencies

that have the expertise on those particular topics.

That will lead to significant problems I believe, and

I would recommend that OSEP retain any enforcement‑

type responsibilities that it has.

Thank you very much. I\'m delighted to

have been able to provide my somewhat jaundiced views

on these topics, and I\'d be happy to join the rest of

the panel in answering any questions.

DR. COULTER: Thank you, Mr. Komer.

Commissioners, we have relatively limited time, so I

would appreciate your adherence to the five minutes,

and I will begin with Commissioner Takemoto.

MS. TAKEMOTO: I would like to wait until

this round finishes.

DR. COULTER: Okay. All right.

Commissioner Sontag?

DR. SONTAG: Paula, it\'s good to see you

again.

MS. GOLDBERG: Thank you.

DR. SONTAG: I\'d like to ask you a couple

of questions about the data that you present on page

13 of your report. I think we all have some concerns

about funding for special education coupled with I

think we need to take a reasonable look at that

growth. And as I looked at the area that you had the

most action on, so to speak, it\'s attention deficit

disorders. Would you be willing to foreshadow what

that might mean in terms of potential growth in

special education?

MS. GOLDBERG: I can only respond to

actually saying to you that the number of calls we

receive from families, we receive many calls. And we

had a workshop last week in Minnesota where we had

almost 200 parents come. And we asked the question,

how many are receiving special education? And many

of them were not receiving special education. But

their children have issues and they feel their

children aren\'t learning. So it is an area where we

are getting calls from families, and that\'s what I

can say. I can\'t foreshadow that this is going to ‑‑

I can\'t answer your question directly. I can only

say that this is what we are hearing from families of

their concerns. And that when I went around the room

and asked the parents individually beforehand, they

said the schools, it was not working for their child.

DR. SONTAG: Thank you.

DR. COULTER: Commission Berdine?

MR. BERDINE: I want to thank the panel.

This is very interesting. Enjoyed both the written

testimony and your presentations. I have two simple

questions, two straightforward questions. One

directly to Paul and then to the other two panelists.

We\'ve heard a lot of testimony in the

Commission about the disconnect between parents and

communities and teachers, and we\'ve heard a lot of

testimony about from teachers that they leave the

field because of the litigious nature of special

education. What recommendations would you make to

OSEP, Paula, that would help reconnect teachers in

training with parents? And the same question would

be to the other panelists, what recommendations would

you make to OSEP that would reconnect teachers in

training to the legal system that they need to learn

how to operate in?

MS. GOLDBERG: Two points then I will

address your question. One, Suzanne Martin from the

University of Florida has a new national significance

grant and it is to try and train, develop a

curriculum to train teachers pre‑service about

working with families, and I think that is a critical

piece both in regular ed teachers and special ed

teachers.

On the 60 Minutes show there was a

professor who said that at her university, teachers

are not taught how to work with families and that it

is a very critical role. So that would be one major

suggestion that I think is important.

MS. MARGOLIS: I think that that\'s a

really key point. Having just served on a Maryland

State Department of Education task force on teacher

preparation, recruitment and retention, my

subcommittee, which was looking at teacher

preparation issues as they affect recruitment and

retention heard from new teachers, experienced

teachers, school administrators, families and put our

own experiences on the table as well.

And I think we\'ve concluded, and I

certainly have in my years of practice, that a good

deal of the disputes that occur between families and

school systems are based on lack of good

communication. And I think it\'s really essential

that teachers learn as they\'re being trained how to

deal with families. I just sat through a meeting on

Monday that was one of the most unpleasant meetings I

have ever attended and thought, you know, I wish I

could write an article on how to turn an ally, a

parent ally into an adversary in three hours or less.

And I\'m not going to write that article, and I\'m

going to continue to try to work with my school

system, but it was an extraordinary experience for

me, and I have a lot more experience in this field

professionally than most parents do.

I think also that in terms of

understanding the legal system, it is important for

teachers to do that. But we heard from teachers who

complained that the bulk of the professional

development that they receive is on what the law

requires. And I think again that if teachers receive

the kind of preparation they really need to work with

kids with a variety of disabilities in their

classrooms, if they learned how to modify curriculum,

adapt curriculum, do effective behavior interventions

with kids, that a lot of the legal stuff would just

sort itself out and that focusing on the legal issues

rather than focusing on the substantive education

issues for teachers in training is really one of the

reasons why there are so many disputes as well as the

communication issue.

MR. KOMER: I\'m not sure that I have

anything specific that I can add to that. I think

that what that reflects is part of a larger problem,

which is that many times teachers are not

particularly responsive to any parents, not just the

parents of disabled children, and that\'s an issue

that has to be addressed systemically.

The IDEA is beneficial in that it requires

a certain level of parental interaction, and I fully

support any teacher training changes that make

teachers more responsive. But as long as the larger

systemic issue, which is, particularly in inner

cities, that the student population is essentially

captive and has no other alternatives, I think that

it\'s inevitable that administrations and teachers as

parts of the educational establishment will be

unresponsive as long as the population there doesn\'t

have other alternatives.

If the parents know that they can leave

and the school districts know that they will lose

their client base, I think you\'ll see school

districts react different to all parents, not just

the parents of disabled kids.

DR. COULTER: Commissioner Pasternack?

DR. PASTERNACK: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I\'d like to state for the record that Leslie and

Paula exemplify the kind of parents as professional

model that we have in many parents across the

country.

The first thing I\'d like to ask

particularly Paula and Leslie is what about the

complaint system doesn\'t work, and how can OSEP help

make it better?

MS. GOLDBERG: When we did a survey, and I

would be happy to share with you all the responses

from the parent centers around the country, but they

say they do not, if the state takes an action,

sometimes it takes four months for the state to get

back to them rather than the 60 days required. So,

one,they\'re not always following the law.

DR. PASTERNACK: Okay.

MS. GOLDBERG: Two, one of the things that

we found in Minnesota was that if they issued a

corrective action plan, there was no follow‑up for

the local district to actually do it, so the parent

would say, well, I went through this process, the

complaint. The state issued a report and nothing

happened in my local district. So Minnesota hired

two staff people to follow up on the corrective

action plan and within 30 days they kept following up

and that\'s made a tremendous difference in the

implementation.

So whether you look at the process, you

talk to Norina Hale, who is the state director in

Minnesota, and you put some timelines and some I

think it\'s more funds in terms of more staff to

actually make it work, and in the long run it\'s going

to save money because it will have fewer due process

hearings and fewer adversarial issues.

DR. PASTERNACK: Okay.

MS. MARGOLIS: I can only speak to

Maryland, and I think we\'re an example of how federal

monitoring can at times really make a difference,

particularly if there are teeth behind it. Our

complaint management system has improved

significantly over the last few years. For the first

time, we have a system that actually lists

enforcement actions that can be taken. We never had

enforcement.

Now the state hasn\'t actually exercised

those or has just begun to exercise some of those,

but we actually have a written procedure now that

lists enforcement as a piece of the process.

We use the complaint management system a

great deal in our office. We don\'t have the

resources, we don\'t have the staff to be able to go

to a lot of due process hearings. And frankly, a lot

of issues don\'t lend themselves well to due process

hearings, so that is a very important remedy for

people to have.

We have found the complaint system most

effective when it deals with concrete violations of

the IDEA that the state can look to the regulations,

find something and pin its findings to them. We have

been less successful where we have filed complaints

to try to change the quality of the services,

particularly what we\'ve found in our discipline

project is that so many of the cases that come to us

as discipline cases are really appropriateness cases.

They are kids who have not been identified for

special education or the kids who are in special

education but have really worthless behavior

intervention plans if they have any intervention

plans at all.

When we have tried to complain about the

quality of the behavior intervention plan, we\'ve not

been as successful, I think because our state feels

like they don\'t have anything from OSEP or anything

in the law that they can pin a finding to and

actually make a qualitative judgment about.

So I think that to the extent that there

can be more guidance coming from OSEP, to the extent

that there can be more specificity about what the

components would be of a good behavior intervention

plan, that\'s an example of the kind of thing I think

would help the process a lot.

But we have been able to make both

individual change at the student level and systemic

change through the complaint process, and that\'s a

very recent thing for us. It\'s really only in the

last maybe two or three years that we\'ve been able to

do that, and I think OSEP had a lot to do, because we

were monitored in 1999, and I think that Maryland

felt a great deal of pressure because of the

impending monitoring visits.

MS. GOLDBERG: One thing I just want to

mention is that up until \'97, there was a secretarial

review of complaints that parents could file. Now

let\'s say a state complaint system isn\'t working, the

parents have no option. There\'s no place that they

can appeal. Most systems have some place where you

can appeal, and at this point, there isn\'t that.

DR. PASTERNACK: But apropos of what you

said earlier, it was taking years for secretarial

reviews to happen, and so wasn\'t one of the

complaints that by the time the secretarial reviews

are done, the kid had graduated from school and so it

was no longer relevant to the needs of that kid?

MS. GOLDBERG: I\'m not sure. I wasn\'t

involved in that in terms of that they were taking a

long time.

MS. MARGOLIS: If I could respond to that

quickly. I think when the IDEA was reauthorized in

1997, some of us at least commented that while the

secretarial review process had not worked

effectively, that wasn\'t a reason to eliminate the

secretarial review process. It was an indication of

the need to improve that process. And when the state

is responsible for violations of the IDEA or when the

complaint process is not working, there is a real

lack of a place to appeal to if there\'s not a

secretarial review process available.

DR. PASTERNACK: At the risk of incurring

the wrath of the Chair, one more quick question or

quick question for a quick answer. What would

compliance with enforcement look like so that OSEP

would know what it is that you\'re specifically

recommending so that we have a system where we can

get states to be in compliance since the NCD report

suggests again, not to be redundant, that no state is

in compliance with the IDEA?

MS. MARGOLIS: We\'re in the process of

developing what we\'re calling a sanctions protocol

that will be added to our proposal. But essentially,

we are looking at a system that has the indicators

that would tell you if that priority is being met,

and then using data to sort states into categories,

the ones that are meeting or exceeding the

indicators, the ones that are close but need some

work, the ones that need a lot more work, and the

ones that we put in the category of unacceptable, and

would want OSEP to focus its attention primarily on

the states falling into the unacceptable category,

because those are the states that are harming

children by their failure to implement the IDEA.

The range of interventions would depend on

the nature of the violation and on the reason for the

violation. If it\'s an issue of capacity building,

we\'d want the technical assistance, the resources,

the ability to build capacity in place with timelines

and with actions that would occur if those timelines

are not met.

If the reason for failure to implement is

maliciousness, for lack of a better word, if it\'s a

deliberate decision to flaunt the requirements of the

IDEA, then the intervention would obviously look

different you might leap to the enforcement piece.

But we\'re in the process of developing a proposal for

that sanctions protocol that would then be shared

with the larger work group in June.

DR. PASTERNACK: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

DR. COULTER: Commissioner Fletcher?

DR. FLETCHER: I have quick questions that

don\'t require elaborate answers, starting with Mr.

Komer. I\'m wondering, in terms of your advocacy of

parental choice programs, whether that\'s with or

without accountability at the level of either the

school or the child?

MR. KOMER: School choice fundamentally

functions on accountability at the level of the

parent, the family. If the family is dissatisfied

with the services they receive, the family chooses a

different provider. It\'s the same sort of

accountability that I as a parent with kids who are

now in private school exercise on a daily basis.

DR. FLETCHER: If parental satisfaction

was an index for the success of our schools, would we

need accountability systems such as the ones that are

being put in place?

MR. KOMER: If it was in a broader

competitive environment, perhaps not. But in fact we

don\'t have that. We have a system in which 90

percent of the kids are in public schools, almost all

of those in the schools they\'ve been assigned to.

And the accountability system is needed to determine

whether or not they\'re providing the services that we

believe they should be providing.

DR. FLETCHER: How do parents know whether

the child is getting effective services without some

form of accountability?

MR. KOMER: In most of the states, the

kids in private schools take tests just as kids in

public schools take tests. My kids take the ERBs

every year. And we have a pretty good idea how

they\'re doing.

DR. FLETCHER: But for states that

provide, for example, parental choice for kids with

disabilities, those types of tests are often not

appropriate for the child.

MR. KOMER: That would be an interesting

question to ask in the states of Vermont and Maine

where the voucher programs there called tuitioning,

the school boards basically have two

responsibilities. One is to determine where the kids

are going to school, and second to provide special

education services to those kids who are identified

as in need of special ed. I\'m not sure what

accountability systems Maine and Vermont require with

respect to those special ed kids, but that would be a

model that you could look at.

DR. FLETCHER: In Florida children with

disabilities can be placed in private schools with no

form of accountability. I gather you support that?

MR. KOMER: We have supported the McKay

Scholarship Program, although I haven\'t seen yet

because it\'s so new, whether the expansion has

continued to result in high levels of parental

satisfaction or not. I don\'t think anybody\'s studied

that.

DR. FLETCHER: Ms. Goldberg, speaking of

parental satisfaction, all the data that you

presented here is based on parental responses. Do

you have any data on the response, for example, of

the professionals that attend PTI trainings or on the

responses of SEAs or LEAs or schools on PTIs?

MS. GOLDBERG: We do have data in terms of

professionals who fill out workshop evaluations at

the end. We haven\'t collected that. There was a

major research study done a number of years ago on a

PTI that actually had control groups of parents and

asked a system of teachers throughout the state and

also special ed directors. But to my knowledge,

that\'s the only piece of a major research project

that was done.

DR. FLETCHER: So pretty much the data

that you\'re presenting is restricted to parental

responses, and you don\'t survey, for example, schools

to find out if they\'re aware of PTIs or how they feel

about the services provided by PTIs and so on?

MS. GOLDBERG: At this point, we developed

a system to begin. There was no systemized approach

to collecting data from the parent centers across the

country, so our first step was really to begin to

collect data from families. But we certainly could

begin to look at the other avenues.

DR. FLETCHER: And then quickly, I notice

also like Commissioner Sontag that many of the phone

calls that you get are from parents of children with

ADHD and learning disabilities. And I\'m wondering if

you know to what extent the primary concern for these

families is over eligibility issues. In other words,

the dispute occurs at the level of entry into special

education versus the types of services that are

provided.

MS. GOLDBERG: I cannot answer that. We

do not ask that question at this particular moment

across the whole country.

DR. FLETCHER: Thank you.

DR. COULTER: Commissioner Takemoto?

MS. TAKEMOTO: Thank you, Mr. Chair or Dr.

Chair, for giving me some extended time for

developing the question. But for me this has been a

developmental process of listening to lots of folks

around the country. I guess I see special education

as being a great bang for the buck when I see the

lights turning on for students with disabilities,

parents, teachers, educators and administrators, that

there are lots of good things happening and there are

lots of good things happening with very little

resources.

I\'m shocked that OSEP has 107 or had 107

employees to do all that work. And it also strikes

me that much of the work or much of the bang for the

buck with those few people has had to do with using

the field to come up with solutions, using the field

to work together more closely to come up with

solutions and also disseminating those solutions to

parents, students, practitioners, educators.

So from each of you my question is, at the

same time we\'ve seen and been distressed by those

lights that have gone out in those students, in those

teachers, in those families, in those educators, what

would be the most important thing that OSEP could do

to keep the lights in those eyes shining bright? And

you don\'t have extended time for response here.

MS. GOLDBERG: I think it\'s a whole range

of things. You\'re asking for one thing. I think

it\'s teacher training. I think it\'s parent training.

I think it\'s a number of different things. It\'s hard

to prioritize one. But certainly I also think OSEP

in taking a leadership role and saying that the IDEA

is important and that special education children have

high expectations and can learn and that we look at

access to the general curriculum.

All the things that we\'ve been talking

about are significant and important, and OSEP playing

that role of encouraging that, encouraging technical

assistance, encouraging research. I think the Part D

programs I think Tom mentioned that they are

underfunded, and I think we need to look at that and

we need to encourage more funding to have that

infrastructure of research, training, technical

assistance.

MS. MARGOLIS: I agree that it\'s a range

of things and would say obviously increased resources

are key. More prompt and clear technical assistance

from OSEP. We\'ve heard from states that they\'ve

asked for guidance and it\'s sometimes been years

before they\'ve received a response.

So a quicker turnaround time for guidance,

making the comprehensive system of personnel

development meaningful, supporting better training

for teachers, and look at what teachers really need

to know to work with kids with disabilities I think

are some of the things.

MR. KOMER: I think OSEP is in a unique

position to know what states are doing it right and

to publicize the states that are doing it right and

to hold them up as examples for the other states in

an exemplary way.

DR. COULTER: Thank you, witnesses. I

know two of you are running relatively tight in terms

of needing to return to your base. We want to thank

you very much for your willingness to provide

testimony and for your responsiveness to our

questions on what we consider to be a vital topic.

So we thank you.

Members of the audience, we will be

reconvening at 1:15 to take testimony and we\'ll see

you then. Thank you.

(Whereupon at, 12:10 p.m. on Friday, April

26, 2002, the hearing recessed, to be reconvened at

1:15 p.m. the same day.)

AFTERNOON SESSION

(1:15 p.m.)

DR. COULTER: I\'d like to welcome you to

the afternoon session of the OSEP Task Force, Role

and Function. We have witnesses this afternoon, and

the witness that is before us now is ‑‑ I\'m sorry, I

have just been advised by my colleagues to remind

everyone that we do have a sign language interpreter

available in the room. Those people that need

interpretation, if they would indicate to us, so we

can make certain that we can get the interpreter in

front of you.

We have two witnesses this afternoon.

Speaking to the topic of OSEP ‑ Achieving Excellence

in Implementing Special Education Through Federal

Leadership, with us today are Dr. Philip J. Burke.

Dr. Burke is Professor and Chair of the Special

Education Department at the University of Maryland.

Dr. Burke also serves as Director of the

Institute for the Study of Exceptional Children and

Youth, housed in the University\'s Department of

Special Education.

With us also today is Martin Gould, the

Senior Research Specialist for the National Council

on Disability, an independent federal agency that

makes recommendations to the President and to

Congress on disability policy issues.

Gentlemen, thank you very much for coming

today. Dr. Burke, you\'re on.

DR. BURKE: My greetings to members of the

President\'s Commission on Excellence in Special

Education, ex officio members, staff of the

Commission, all staff present, and guests. I\'m

honored to come before you today to address the

topics of achieving excellence in implementing

special education programs through federal leadership

as it is provided by the Office of Special Education.

Indeed, we have entered a new century, and

have been awakened as a nation to the critical

importance of education in all aspects of our lives.

We find ourselves at a crossroads in public

education. To quote Robert Frost, we took the road

less traveled by with respect to the federal role in

education.

That has now evolved dramatically from a

collector and disseminator of statistics, the early

role served by the U.S. Office of Education, the E in

the HEW of an earlier era, to a new and vital role,

an active role in not only encouraging excellence in

education, but in requiring that expectations and

outcomes be defined and assessed.

Progress in this raelm since the

publication of \"A Nation at Risk\" 19 years ago, is

nothing short of spectacular, as exemplified in the

No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. In the less

traveled road, generally the active federal

environment has been traveled before.

The history of special education and the

active role prescribed by Congress to address the

educational needs of children with disabilities

predates general education initiatives by over 25

years, and it is important to remember that history

as we look to the future.

The current OSEP traces its organizational

roots to 1963 when President Kennedy created the

Division of Handicapped Children and Youth. This

Division was organized to administer newly‑organized

grant programs under Public Law 88164, Programs in

Teacher Training, Research and Demonstration.

It is important to note that these

programs were not completely new with the Kennedy

Administration. They built upon programs authorized

earlier with a piece of legislation signed by

President Eisenhower in 1958.

Our country was always in a difficult

period in 1958, with the recent launch of Sputnik and

the national crisis of confidence that that resulted

in. This led the enactment of the National Defense

Education Act, however, along with federal

legislation designed to stimulate the preparation of

scientists that year, Congress and the Eisenhower

Administration recognized the need to prepare

teachers of children with disabilities.

So, Public Law 85926 was enacted, creating

a significant role for the Federal Government in the

field of mental retardation. It\'s important to note

that President Eisenhower signed that bill just four

days after signing the National Defense Education

Act.

In 1967, Congress amended the Elementary

and Secondary Education Act and added Title VI to

address the needs of children with disabilities.

With the enactment of Public Law 89750, Congress also

created the Bureau of Education of the Handicapped to

administer this expanded federal role in the

education of children with disabilities.

The creation of DEH was designed to

rectify the earlier dissolution of the Division of

the Handicapped Children and Youth, which had become

a casualty of an organizational streamlining effort

in Government.

Testimony before Congress indicated that

dispersal of programs of research, personnel

preparation, aid to states, and demonstration that

occurred as a result of the dismantling of the

Division of Handicapped Children and Youth have led

to reduced services and other undesirable results.

It is important to review this history

because the need for a strong and viable OSEP cannot

be overstated, in my view. Not just the presence,

but a dynamic organization that provides national

leadership, not just federal leadership.

That leadership must involve every element

necessary to make the Individuals with Disabilities

Education Act a formidable presence in the lives of

children and youth and their families as they

experience education in our nation\'s schools.

Key to dynamic leadership are the elements

of research, personnel preparation, compliance, and

monitoring or programs, and a demonstration of state‑

of‑the‑art practices in all aspects of special

education.

I\'ll paraphrase some of the testimony: A

continuing and strengthened national leadership role

is urged for OSEP. This is well beyond the concept

of federal leadership in special education. The

latter implies a limited role of getting grants out

for discretionary programs and conducting the

necessary monitoring of compliance.

National leadership would require the

steadfast commitment to staffing the OSEP by the most

highly‑qualified professionals, individuals with

experience and status in the field and in related

disciplines, individuals with expertise and standing

in the professional field that is recognized widely,

and who are respected for their independent

understand of issues and programs and the challenges

faced by the delivery of the promise of IDEA in all

respects.

As the federal role in education evolves,

and assumes a more prominent national posture in the

lives of children and their families, it is essential

that OSEP provide critical ongoing leadership.

Current staff and the leadership of OSEP should be

commended for a steadfast commitment to the ideals

and purposes of IDEA in all respects.

They have functioned effectively in very

challenging times, however, as we look to the future

and the role of OSEP, we must find ways to strengthen

that leadership. It should be possible to enable

experienced professionals from universities, state

departments of education, and local schools to serve

for a productive period in OSEP, possibly on

supported leave.

In the past, it has been possible to have

various internship programs. It might also be

possible to create similar experiences for more

senior professionals who might be able to join OSEP

to support this concept of strong leadership.

Effective national leadership would be

achieved with a blend of experienced civil servants,

senior executive personnel, appointees, and a potent

mixture of additional experts and professionals in

the field, the latter a mix of both junior and senior

professionals augmented with interns. Of course,

this mix of personnel would also include parents and

individuals with disabilities.

I\'d just like to talk briefly about some

of the problems we have in special education today,

and they are very significant. One of the critical

problems involves the availability of skilled, well‑

prepared teachers.

Will a child\'s teacher be competent,

qualified, well‑prepared, and well‑supported in the

classroom? Will the teacher had access to state‑of‑

the‑art intervention strategies and the latest

curriculum developments, the latest technology,

access to staff development of the highest quality?

Unfortunately, when students gain access,

which we seem to have formulated very efficiently, we

seem to have resolved the issue of access, but,

unfortunately, the answers to the questions about the

type of teacher they\'re going to receive is perhaps

followed by the polite inquiry to ascertain the

school system or school building, or teacher the

child will encounter.

With widespread shortages of qualified

special education teachers, access all too often

means access to a program with a provisionally‑

certified or emergency‑credentialed teacher. There

are some suggestions that I have made with a strong

leadership role to strengthen the operation of OSEP,

and I outlined those in my testimony. I won\'t read

it; I\'ll highlight them. For example, one would be

conceptual. The concept of what was being considered

for award or funding were programs, not projects.

That\'s particularly true in the personnel

preparation area. If you view the grants before you

as projects, the natural question to ask is what\'s

new in this or is this new? When, indeed, you\'re

looking at programs to prepare teachers or doctoral

students for leadership, a more appropriate question

is, is this program state‑of‑the‑art and of the

highest quality? And the shift to functioning, to

looking at grants as programs as opposed to projects,

would be extremely helpful. It\'s more than a

conceptual shift. It might also be possible through

this to identify highly‑effective programs, models

that could be identified by others to be emulated and

replicated.

Operationally, as the grants are reviewed

in OSEP, it\'s been in the recent past ‑‑ 30 points,

for example, have been awarded to need on the grants.

A suggestion might be ‑‑ I know that that\'s been

reduced recently, but one would assume that if there

was no need for the program, that the Secretary would

not be issuing a priority, and it might well be that

those points could be reassigned to, say, the quality

of the program that\'s under review, and that the

field leaders would be judging the actual state of

the art or the quality of the program that\'s being

reviewed, and that would have a large influence on

whether or not the program is to be supported.

There are several things within personnel

preparation right now that were to inhibit the

efficacy of the program. For example, the payback

provision wherein individuals are required to pay

back two years for every year of support, no matter

how that support is defined, works as a disincentive

for a large number of students, particularly mid‑

career‑changing students.

It creates a dynamic that is

counterproductive, and there are no data to support

the need for a payback, at least that I\'m aware of.

In fact, a recent study found that 98 percent of the

doctoral graduates of those personnel preparation

programs were actually employed in the field of

special education. So what little data we do have

shows that there\'s no need for the payback.

Comments on planning CSPD and state

improvement grants: We\'ve had CSPD since Public Law

94‑142 was enacted. This is a comprehensive system

of personnel development. It\'s a system that is

supposed to help states and regions to plan for the

needs for personnel.

Basically it hasn\'t been happening, in

some places, not at all, in other places, rather

ineffectively. We now have the State Improvement

Grant Program, and while it\'s been in existence for

only two years, there are a number of questions about

its efficacy and how it\'s functioning.

For example, the SIG and CSPD requirements

should be examined carefully, and implemented in a

fashion that responds directly to the personnel needs

in the field.

A few comments on review panels: Every

effort should be made to look at the review panel and

its efficacy as it functions in OSEP. There have

been suggestions by organizations such as HECSI, and

we have also had a work group on peer review that

made recommendations.

These recommendations should be examined

to see where appropriate changes ought to made. To

give you an example of how it plays out, the

experience in the recent past has been that there

would be three field graders. One would be an

expert, one would be the representative of an under‑

represented minority group, and another person would

be a person with a disability.

When you have that lock‑step formulation

of panels, the part that seems to lose out is the

expertise with respect to judging the personnel

preparation program, when, indeed, the responsibility

of the panel should be to bring to the review, the

ability and expertise to make sound judgments on

whether the grant application represents state‑of‑

the‑art practice of the highest quality in the

appropriate field of preparation.

On grant size and funding shortages, its\'

absolutely clear ‑‑ and you\'ll see in my

recommendations that OSEP has been grossly under‑

funded, especially in light of the fact that we have

seen such rampant teacher shortages over the past

decade. Few realize that the actual funding that was

targeted in this field was not increased for ten

years, for an entire decade.

This past year it was increased by \$8

million. That was the first increase in ten years.

But an accompanying difficulty, and one that you may

want to look at, is the move by OSEP to go to

significantly larger grants, apparently to reduce the

amount of paperwork involved and the number of

actions that people had to deal with ‑‑ the burden on

staff, so to speak.

It also has resulted in diminution in the

number of programs that could be funded. In the most

recent cycle, for instance, in high incidence, there

were 145 applications. Sixty of them were

recommended to be awarded by the panels and approved,

but only 27 were actually funded.

So we were left in the midst of a blatant

teacher shortage in every state in the Union. We

had, for example, 33 grants that were fundable, but

that were left unfunded. So it\'s a combination.

Mostly the problem is a lack of funding,

but, operationally, some examination should be given

to the size of those grants. To fund small grants

and target them in a program as opposed to a project,

I think the payoff would be much greater for OSEP.

Also, if the problem is paperwork, some

consideration should be given to multi‑year awards.

If you\'ve given an award for three years, you ought

to be able to make the award and not have to deal

with the continual review each year. There has to be

a way to change that.

The funding: We\'ll be recommending, at

the very least, that there be a doubling of the

current appropriation for Part D, which would be \$185

million, at least. At the leadership level, we\'re

learning that there has been a serious decline in the

number of doctoral students. These are the people

who staff our colleges and universities.

In fact, a study founded by OSEP found

that there has been a 30‑percent decline in the

production of leadership personnel. That\'s becoming

a serious problem for us as the faculty in colleges

and universities who prepare the teachers are

beginning age out.

Award cycles: This is the mantra of

training programs and others for years, but it is

important to recognize that there is a cycle with

respect to induction for students. This past cycle,

grants were submitted in October or November of 2000,

and then the awards were made in the following summer

in July.

Those of you who are familiar with how

teacher education or personnel preparation or

doctoral study works, July and August is already way

too late to be recruiting a class of students who

will then be involved in preparation. It makes the

program that much more inefficient and lessens the

impact that you can actually achieve with personnel

preparation.

It would be a really good idea to work

towards submissions in October and November, with

announcements in February or March, and then the

staff of OSEP would then be able to finish that work

and go out and actually work with the teacher

education programs and training through April, May,

and June.

Recommendations ‑‑ and these I will read:

Firstly, OSEP is woefully under‑funded, given the

breadth of the mission to address the full

implementational IDEA.

In the realm of teacher and leadership

shortages, as well as in research, every effort must

be made to increase the discretionary funding

available for these critical programs. As funding

for IDEA is increased, it is strongly recommended

that concomitant and proportional indexed funding

increases be made available in the discretionary

budget.

Secondly, strengthen OSEP. The role of

OSEP is unique in government. It must be

strengthened as it achieves the development and

implementation of IDEA in all of its elements and

purposes.

Thirdly, through augmented staffing and

support, elevate OSEP to a more nationally‑visible

leadership role, professionally, well beyond the

currently‑construed federal role related to grant

management and monitoring.

Fourth, the interconnection and

interrelationship between research, personnel

preparation, demonstration, and monitoring and

evaluation of state programs must be maintained

within OSEP and strengthened. OSEP cannot

successfully carry out the scope of its mission

without these programs functioning in one location,

organizationally, operating as an effective and

comprehensive unit.

Fifth, OSEP should be reorganized with the

creation of major divisions for research, personnel

preparation, and leadership, state assistance, and

monitoring.

Sixth, OSEP should consider making

significant changes in the peer review process and

procedures for making awards, including realistic

timelines, size of awards, and elimination of the

payback provision.

Conceptually and operationally, OSEP

should move to consideration of the program, and not

project funding, where appropriate, including the

elimination of ratios for student financial support.

And, finally, CSPD and SIG should be

examined carefully to determine how they are

contributing to teacher production and staff

development, particularly with respect to support for

pre‑service preparation of teachers in institutions

of higher education, as well as staff development for

personnel in the schools.

Thank you.

DR. COULTER: Thank you, Dr. Burke. Mr.

Gould?

DR. GOULD: Good afternoon, members of the

President\'s Commission on Excellence in Special

Education; thanks for inviting NCD to participate

today. I\'m Dr. Martin Gould, Senior Research

Specialist at the National Council on Disability.

NCD is an independent federal agency

making recommendations to the President and Congress

on all issues affecting Americans with disabilities.

NCD is charged by Congress with monitoring federal

statutes and programs pertaining to people with

disabilities, assessing their effectiveness, and

meeting their needs.

Its mission is to provide a voice in the

Federal Government and in Congress for all people

with disabilities, in the development of policies and

delivery of programs that affect their lives. One of

those areas involves public education, including

special education.

Of the various issues that are likely to

be taken up during the IDEA reauthorization process

this year, as you point out, leadership will be one

of the key issues. NCD believes an integral part of

exercising federal leadership is the role that OSEP

must play in implementing and enforcing the civil

rights law know as IDEA.

We believe it\'s not enough to support

enforcement; you must do it. How well is IDEA

working? How well has federal leadership worked?

In more than 25 years since its enactment,

IDEA\'s implementation has produced improvements in

the quality and effectiveness of the public education

received by millions of children with disabilities.

National data show that, depending on

which annual report you use, 27 to 60 percent of

students who receive special ed graduate with

diplomas, compared to 75 percent of their peers who

don\'t get special ed and don\'t need it.

About 27 percent of students who have IEPs

complete high school, compared to 68 percent of the

general student population. Three to five years

after leaving high school, more than half are found

to be employed, compared to 69 percent of their

peers.

National data also show that 50 percent of

students who receive special ed are instructed in

regular classrooms, where they have access to general

curricula and more rigorous educational instruction.

We really believe these outcomes are a result of

OSEP\'s involvement with state and local school

districts over the years.

We also believe that the educational

outcomes could be much better through strengthened

federal leadership and consistent implementation and

enforcement of the law. We repeat: You must not

just support enforcement; you must do enforcement.

In January of 2000, as you well know, NTD

released Back to School on Civil Rights, a report

that analyzed data contained in the Department of

Education state monitoring reports. The study

measured compliance and enforcement in the areas of

free and appropriate public education, least

restrictive environment, individualized education

programs, transition services, general supervision,

residual safeguards and protections, and evaluation

of students with disabilities.

The study also looked at the enforcement

and decisionmaking efforts by leadership of the

Department of Education. As you know, NCD\'s report

revealed that a majority of states, to different

degrees and over many years, have failed to ensure

compliance and enforcement in these areas.

What are the implications and consequences

of chronic non‑compliance and lack of enforcement:

The most basic and fundamental principles of a civil

rights law such as IDEA.

First, when critical, individualized

education services and programs such as individual

mental health and psychological counselling are not

provided, students may well develop behavioral

problems that require school districts to apply

serious disciplinary consequences to those children.

Secondly, when students do not receive the

speech or physical therapy services the IEPs require

and that they\'re deemed eligible for. They cannot

achieve economic outcomes. Clearly, those children

will be left behind.

Third, when school systems continue to

categorically and unnecessarily place students,

particularly those from diverse backgrounds, in more

restrictive educational settings, unnecessarily,

students will be stigmatized, will have difficulty

learning, and school systems cannot maximize the use

of the scarce federal education dollars they receive

yearly.

Fourth, when students do not have

transition plans to prepare them and their families

for the role of work or college or the demands of

community life after high school, they are not likely

to become independent and responsible adults.

The ongoing struggle of many students with

disabilities, their parents, and their advocates to

obtain services under IDEA leaves them with the

impression that the Federal Government is not

enforcing the law effectively. In far too many

cases, parents are still the main enforcement vehicle

for ensuring compliance with IDEA at all levels of

government.

To address this issue, as well as other

matters that affect students and their families, as

well as schools, NCD recommends:

First, OSEP should strengthen compliance

monitoring and enforcement by recognizing states that

are performing well. I repeat: Recognize states

that are performing well; offer ongoing technical

assistance to states to correct non‑compliance; and

apply consequences consistently when proven

objectives are not met.

Second, OSEP should make as its own

compliance monitoring and enforcement priority for

the next five years, the assessment of state progress

towards completing and creating reliable and

comprehensive data to support effective state

compliance monitoring and enforcement capabilities.

Third, OSEP should closely monitor state

progress in developing those reliable data collection

and reporting mechanisms that adequately and

accurately assess both state compliance and

performance results for students with disabilities.

I repeat: Compliance and performance results for

students with disabilities.

This recommendation coincides with the

1997 IDEA reauthorization to focus IDEA

implementation more closely on objective performance

standards and results measures.

Fourth, OSEP should expand its program

support for initiatives that promote educational

opportunities and rights for under‑served populations

of children and youth with disabilities and their

families.

More programs are needed to explain IDEA\'s

requirements and the rights and unique needs of

students with disabilities who are involved in the

juvenile justice, Immigration and Naturalization, and

child welfare systems, as well as in schools operated

or funded by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Fifth, OSEP\'s monitoring process in each

state should routinely include an ethnically diverse

sample of students with a match to their records,

where interviewed, along with their parents and

service providers for a determination of whether the

law\'s requirements are being met on their behalf or

not.

Sixth, OSEP should issue the monitoring

reports as soon as possible after the site visit,

preferably within 60 days or two months, whichever

comes first.

Seventh and finally, OSEP should develop

and test the use of state compliance agreements that

incorporate appropriate sanctions selected from a

broad range of enforcement options and link them to

the state\'s failure or inability to correct specific

non‑compliant conditions within an agreed timeframe.

OSEP should also encourage the state\'s use of

sanctions in this matter, when the state\'s compliance

monitoring indicates that LEAs are failing to correct

the findings of non‑compliance.

During the course of five studies over 11

years from 1999 to 2000, the National Council

consistently learned that parents of children with

disabilities are enthusiastic supporters of the law.

They think it is a good, sound, solid law. They also

told us there is room for improvement on the basics.

OSEP has the responsibility to exercise a

key leadership role in current IDEA reauthorization

efforts. We stand ready at the National Council to

assist OSEP in any way we can in these endeavors.

Thank you very much for allowing us to testify today.

DR. COULTER: Thank you both for your

formal testimony. I would now like to turn it over

to Commissioners to ask their questions.

Commissioner Sontag?

DR. SONTAG: Dr. Burke, good to see you

again. You\'re looking older all the time.

DR. BURKE: Thanks for the compliment.

DR. SONTAG: A couple of questions on the

area of personnel preparation: One deals with the

issue of quality, which you testified to in the

review process.

As I\'ve look through the years at that

issue, I think that for the most part, OSEP does fund

quality grants. But if we look at the issue of

teacher training right now and the significant need

for large expansion of the number of teachers, do you

think there might be another way, another funding

strategy that might increase the number of, first,

secondary institutions that could get involved in

training?

DR. BURKE: Actually, there are quite a

number. I called the Council for Exceptional

Children a few months ago, just simply to learn how

many people are involved in the preparation of

special education teachers. Their estimate is that

in the country there are 700.

That\'s quite a few; that\'s well beyond the

number of people that actually receive grants from

OSEP. I believe the number of grantees that are

involved in the production of teachers that are

funded by OSEP represents a fairly small fraction.

The issue here really would be to expand

the discretionary funding, going for ten years in the

midst of a severe crisis, and lack of personnel,

really has inhibited the production of personnel and

teachers. And I think that we are beginning, as of a

couple of years ago, to really pay for that lack of

support.

That\'s why many of us are advocating for a

fairly significant increase in the future, so that we

can get more of those individuals involved in some

fairly good quality programs for preparation.

DR. SONTAG: A question to deal with

accountability: I\'m wondering if you could indicate

to us what assurances you make to the schools in

Maryland that your graduates have the ability to

teach? Particularly, do every one of your graduates

know how to produce and write an IEP?

DR. BURKE: Absolutely. It really begins

with the relationship that you have with the school

systems. For example, in the State of Maryland, ten

of the special education directors are graduates of

our department.

The two largest school systems ‑‑

actually, the three ‑‑ Baltimore City, Prince

George\'s County and Montgomery County ‑‑ are headed

by graduates of the University of Maryland, so we

have excellent relationships.

We also convene a spring meeting where we

bring in anywhere from 70 to 100 cooperating teachers

and officials from the schools to interact with us

about what we\'re doing. We present changes that are

in the program, and they give us feedback on the

changes they\'re producing.

That\'s an intensive aspect of what we do,

but it\'s very critical. Also, the movement in

teacher education today is to develop professional

development schools. We\'re in the midst of doing

that now. We\'ve developed three.

These are programs that are in the public

schools where there are faculty working with their

teachers. Our students are all going through year‑

long internships in the same schools, so that the

opportunity to see what the teachers are doing and

how they can perform and where they are in the

process is there.

And I believe it\'s possible to do that in

every single teacher preparation program around the

country.

DR. SONTAG: Thank you.

DR. COULTER: Commissioner Takemoto?

MS. TAKEMOTO: This is for Dr. Gould: I

notice in your testimony that it just takes too long

to do something as simple as inclusion for too many

kids, and that, in fact, kids are aging out, families

are moving to other communities, yet families have

said that the law is terrific. And you\'re saying

PNAs and other attorneys need to get funded to make

the law work, but even when they\'re doing that work,

it\'s just taking too long.

Are there no changes needed in the law to

make that a little bit faster? And what specific

leadership could OSEP take to cut out that nonsense?

DR. GOULD: I don\'t know if we expressed a

timeline or a period of time for school districts to

do inclusion, but we think that in some respects

there are school districts that may not be doing

that. We think that part of the issue is that there

are still school districts who are categorically

placing some students because of their label, in

programs that are unnecessarily or overly

restrictive.

So it\'s a mixed bag. We think that in

those instances when attention is paid up front to

the individual needs of students, and their label

doesn\'t drive a placement, we think that inclusion

may be progressing at a timely pace. But in other

instances, it does take some time for students who

represent fairly challenging program issues, who have

a panoply of related services that they need, it will

take time.

In those instances, we believe that school

districts do and should make sure that preparation

time is taken.

MS. TAKEMOTO: I\'m sorry that I have to

interrupt you, but you\'re talking about good

practice. And I\'m saying law and OSEP leadership;

those are the two questions.

If the law is so great that this is

happening, that children are being, in fact, in the

least restrictive environment, then it means that

OSEP is not doing their job in enforcing that civil

right to inclusion. Is the law so terrific that it

really does promote this?

And you\'re saying that time is involved,

but also the report is saying that there are a lot of

legalistic hurdles that take to long.

DR. GOULD: Clearly the law itself doesn\'t

mandate a timeline for that. Individual states\'

regulations are set up. They may or may not provide

any timelines for that.

But, clearly, if the law was not good or

solid, particularly on the matter of least

restrictive environment, you would not have seen the

progress over the past seven or eight years, and more

students moving to less restrictive or unnecessarily

restrictive settings, and more children being

educated in regular classrooms.

MS. TAKEMOTO: So timelines and

implementation would be an important aspect?

DR. GOULD: There is no timeline.

MS. TAKEMOTO: But a timeline would help?

DR. GOULD: A timeline would help.

MS. TAKEMOTO: And the other: Has the

Council looked at minor disabilities turning into

other, more severe disabilities ‑‑ ADHD, learning

difficulty, emotional disability, non‑responsive to

special education, leading to juvenile justice and

dropouts? Have you looked at the secondary effects

of not properly educating students with disabilities?

DR. GOULD: In \'93 we issued a report to

Congress and the Administration called \"Progress and

Prospects,\" where we actually did natural

progressions analysis, following children from grade

to grade, both in regular, non‑special education, as

well as special education.

We saw that there were large numbers of

students in regular education between Grades 2 and 3

and 3 and 4 who became eligible in statistically

significant numbers for special education. We also

saw considerably larger numbers of students in

regular education who moved into special education

between Grades 6 and 7, and many of them were

identified as having some of the labels that you

mentioned.

We have not looked at the progression of

students from one label such as learning disability

to other labels such as serious emotional

disturbance. However, I will mention to you now, as

Dr. Pasternack may be aware, we are undertaking a

study with the Urban Institute, looking at juvenile

justice and delinquency prevention, and we are going

to be studying the intersection of those two social

policy initiatives and their effects on children.

DR. COULTER: Thank you. Commissioner

Berdine?

MR. BERDINE: Thank you, Chairman Coulter.

I have one question for each of you: The question

for Phil is, Phil, you mentioned in your written

report, the SIGs and Commissioner Sontag asked you

some questions about alternative routes to producing

more teachers. Could you address the role, the

impact of SIGs, as you see it over the last two

years, in terms of producing more fully‑qualified

teachers?

DR. BURKE: I think that a fairer

assessment would be that the impact to date of the

ECS has been fairly minimal. The expectation has

been from the beginning ‑‑ our assessment would be

that the impact has been fairly minimal in terms of

production and the availability of teachers, to date.

It\'s been functioning for two years, and one of the

issues that we\'ve raised here is that we see more of

an impact with respect to the production of teachers,

and also in the area of staff development, as well.

In other words, once a teacher leaves a

preparation program, the first several years are very

critical in terms of being able to follow them and

their skills. So, we\'d like to see more of an impact

for our program.

MR. BERDINE: Dr. Gould, in the last page

of your written testimony, you brought up something

that I find very interesting. We\'ve had a number of

parents address the Commission, and almost to a

person they have spoken in support of IDEA, the

concept, the law, but then they had a great deal of

concern about the implementation aspects of it.

In your last page, the middle paragraph,

you talk about the role of P&A being enhanced. I

would assume that that would be a way of addressing

these parental concerns. How would OSEP do that?

How would OSEP have a role in changing the direction

or the emphasis of P&A?

DR. GOULD: Even though the P&As are

funded through the Administration on Developmental

Disabilities, I believe that many federal agencies

share, at the very minimum, a partnership at the

values level and at the program level, in trying to

ensure that resources are directed to those areas

where resources are scarce, but where the need is

great.

We think that the Administration on

Developmental Disabilities has, and we continue to

cooperate with the Office of Special Ed Programs on

such an endeavor. If the Administration and if the

Office of Special Ed Programs were able to identify

geographic areas where there was the greatest need,

or a chronic need, we think that would be one

opportunity to effect such a recommendation.

Although the Administration on

Developmental Disabilities funding pales in

significance to that of the Office of Special Ed

Programs, we believe that ADD\'s own network of

university‑affiliated programs, which now go by

another name, as well as their state DD councils have

both the network, the connection, and the commitment

to provide additional support and leadership and

ideas to such an endeavor.

And, of course, there is always the

opportunity to look to find where cost savings can be

made in other areas directed towards that type of

endeavor.

MR. BERDINE: Thank you. I yield to

Commissioner Sontag.

DR. SONTAG: Actually, there are three

sources of funding for the P&A systems out of the

Department of Health and Human Services. We would

enjoy working with both OSEP and others to see the

extent that their efforts could be coordinated. In

addition to three sources of funding to the P&A,

they\'re recipients of a lot of other grants from our

agency.

DR. COULTER: Commissioner Fletcher?

DR. FLETCHER: Just to follow up on that

question, Dr. Burke, are you saying ‑‑ and I don\'t

know that you\'re saying this, but are you saying that

OSEP doesn\'t always interact effectively with other

agencies like those that Dr. Sontag described, or

other federal agencies in providing coordination of

services or contributing to services and so on?

DR. GOULD: Are you asking me or him?

DR. FLETCHER: I\'m asking you, Dr. Gould.

DR. GOULD: No, I\'m not.

DR. FLETCHER: Can you give me some

examples of how OSEP has interacted effectively with

other agencies to promote effective services for

children with disabilities?

DR. GOULD: We believe that OSEP has

worked with the Centers for Disease Control, in

certain instances, listened to some of the early

testimony today. It was clear that OSEP interacts

with a number of different agencies within the larger

Department of Education.

OSEP interacts effectively with the

National Council on Disability in some of its efforts

over the past year, particularly regarding the area

of focused monitoring systems and a look at current,

continuous monitoring and improvement systems, so,

yes.

DR. FLETCHER: Thank you. I appreciate

those examples. They\'re very helpful. A lot of the

recommendations that you made in your testimony are

essentially recommendations about process,

enforcement, and things of that sort.

I\'m wondering ‑‑ this is a very broad

question, but I\'m wondering how effective is it to

really mandate process? I mean, it seems to me that

when you look at what\'s been accomplished with IDEA,

and I\'m looking back at a publication that you

provided for us as Commissioners, my impression was

that mandates around goals were pretty effective,

whereas mandates about process tended not to be

terribly effective. I\'m sort of struck by your

testimony by the emphasis on process as opposed to

outcomes.

DR. GOULD: I\'d have to disagree with you;

that the civil rights law such as IDEA can be reduced

to process. I think that some of the basic

principles, particularly least restricted environment

is one that I have heard and seen Commissioners talk

about as a key outcome and a result that\'s needed.

So I would have to beg to differ with you in that

respect.

I think there are many other instances

where in the absence of following some fundamental

provisions of the law, like looking at the

individualized needs of a student, regardless of what

some folks might think of the paperwork of an IEP, is

an absolute necessity in developing accommodations.

And I think you also heard that in the

testimony earlier today from Dr. Hehir.

DR. FLETCHER: Would you look at your

recommendations on page 13 and 14 and tell me which

of these do not involve process, please? They say

enforce the law, publicly articulate and implement an

enforcement philosophy, consult with students with

disabilities, enforcement ‑‑ parents have identified

a number of obstacles to participation. I agree that

participation should be outcome, but then it gets

into process again.

My impression is that the bulk of these

recommendations are about process and not about goals

or outcomes, and I\'m asking how effective is it to

take this particular approach, which involves, for

example, modifications of statutes and regulations

around the process, as opposed to clearly

articulating goals like LRE, which I agree is a goal.

DR. GOULD: As you may or may not know,

these recommendations were drawn from a much larger

set of recommendations from the Back to School

Reports. So they represent a small portion.

I would still say that in the absence of a

clear line of thinking and implementation of the law

between input and process. You don\'t get the

outcomes.

DR. FLETCHER: I\'d like you to tell me

what evidence there is that focusing on the process

leads to improved outcomes. My impression is that

while things have certainly improved, we still have

problems with graduation rates. Kids who go to

special education do not learn to read or do math.

Kids with behavior problems are at higher risk for

incarceration, if they are identified for special

education.

Where is the evidence that links process

and outcomes?

DR. GOULD: As you may or may not know,

there is no research base that does such a thing in

this field. I would offer to you the fact that these

things don\'t happen randomly in the absence of

following the current provisions of the law. We

would not get to these randomly or accidentally.

DR. FLETCHER: So essentially there is no

basis for saying that process, a focus on process,

leads to improved outcomes, nor on that basis could

you say that mandates around process are likely to

lead to outcomes, because we don\'t have a research

base that supports that?

DR. GOULD: No, I won\'t say that. What

I\'ll say is that there is no research base to do

that. I might also add that in the absence of a

fuller implementation and enforcement of the law,

undertaking such research might not be fruitful or

productive.

DR. FLETCHER: Thank you. If I could beg

the indulgence of the Chair, I just have one question

for Dr. Burke.

Dr. Sontag was talking about alternative

approaches. One of the problems that\'s commonly

presented to me by deans of colleges of education is

that their university treats their college as a cash

cow, and that they don\'t get full returns on the

amount of revenue that they generate.

I\'m wondering how widespread a problem

that is.

DR. BURKE: Let me see if I understand

your question. A dean told you that their college is

being treated as a cash cow.

DR. FLETCHER: The money that\'s generated

by the College of Education is used to fund other

programs at the university, so that the college

itself may get 75 percent, for example, of the actual

revenue that they generate, because of the number of

students that they actually attract.

DR. BURKE: I don\'t really have any

evidence of that. I think that in my own experience,

that is not the case at the institution where I am.

I\'ve never seen a study that would reinforce that,

either. That may anecdotally be the experience of

the person you talked with.

DR. FLETCHER: Not person, but persons.

So that\'s not your experience.

DR. BURKE: Not at my own institution.

DR. FLETCHER: Thank you.

DR. COULTER: Dr. Burke, your number two

recommendation states that to strengthen OSEP as a

federal unit within OSERS, obviously everybody talks

about additional funds. And certainly in your

testimony, you certainly talked about additional

funds.

Can you give us some other examples than

funding that would help explicate the statement,

strengthen OSEP as a federal unit within OSERS?

DR. BURKE: I think that I focused on in

my testimony, staffing issues, expertise of people

that are on the staff. I think that goes a long way

towards improving the visibility and the presence.

That\'s what I meant by strengthening OSEP,

and I suggested in my testimony, a number of ways to

be able to do that. I think that, in part, I\'m

talking about national leadership versus federal

leadership. We\'d like to see the office elevated

above monitoring grants or processing grants, and

take a much more strident role in terms of

leadership, have more of a professional presentation.

And I think that through augmentation of

staff, a more vibrant approach in terms of bringing

in some people from the field. And I made some

suggestions in my testimony, all the way from very

junior people such as interns ‑‑ of course, we

haven\'t always been as selective with interns as we

maybe should have been, but in terms of bringing

people in from the field and giving them that

experience, most of them go back to their home state.

But I think it really would enliven the

intellectual life in the place, and I think that\'s

important to us. I\'m not saying that to cast

aspersions of current staff; I\'m just saying take

that as a goal to strengthen it.

It\'s very, very important to the field,

and there\'s an historical reason for this, which I

tried to point out. When the Division of Handicapped

Children and Youth was founded by President Kennedy,

the most prominent special educator in the field was

brought in to direct the Division.

And I think ‑‑ so the emphasis would be

for us to continue with this Division to support

individuals who are able to come in and work. I

think that\'s part of what we\'re looking to.

Some of those are intangible, but, indeed,

I think it would help a great deal.

DR. COULTER: Thank you. Dr. Gould, I want

to go back to your comments about the protection and

advocacy system. The recommendation, as I read it,

which I think obviously several of us found of some

interest, seems to imply that it\'s not just OSEP that

has a lower level of desirable performance.

But the way I read this statement, you\'re

not too happy with the way in which P&As have dealt

with enforcement of special education laws. Do you

want to expand on that a little bit?

DR. GOULD: I don\'t think that\'s what we

meant to imply. I think we meant to imply that there

is a way to use the collective energy and resources

of the entities that are funded by different federal

agencies better. We just recommend or suggest one

way.

DR. COULTER: Thank you. I want to ‑‑ my

colleague to my far left was a little concerned that

he lost his turn, so Dr. Burke would probably like

for me to point out that one of the more

distinguished former interns, who is now the

Assistant Secretary, has a few questions for you.

DR. PASTERNACK: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I

should point out for the record that he meant to his

far left, topographically, for the purposes of the

record.

Mr. Gould, I\'m very troubled by the

statement on page 4, towards the bottom of the page,

wherein you write ‑‑ and this is a direct quote from

the paper here: \"These problems essentially condone

non‑compliance with the Act.\" That, to me, is an

incredibly serious accusation.

And as somebody now charged with the

responsibility of assuring compliance with the Act,

given that myself and my predecessor both took an

oath to uphold the law, I\'m very curious about

whether, in fact, you really mean that, and if so, is

that not the type of serious charge that should

actually lead to formal charges being filed against

those people who preceded me, who, according to this,

essentially were violating the very law for which

they took an oath to uphold.

DR. GOULD: That\'s not our determination

to make. The law has been on the books, and I think

people come to government to implement the laws and

the programs that they\'re responsible for. We think

that people intend to do the work of good government,

and when instances arise that they don\'t, over a

number of years, there are issues that need to be

dealt with. How that\'s done, it\'s not ours to say.

DR. PASTERNACK: I guess that in the

spirit of trying to help the Commission understand

today\'s hearing, this task force is taking a specific

look at OSEP\'s role and function in a variety of

issues, in order to carry out the President\'s charge,

that we achieve excellence in special education.

So, I guess it would be perhaps a topic

that we can continue talking about, since we\'ve

begun, I think, a good collaborative effort. And I

appreciate some of the things that you said earlier.

But I guess maybe you can help this task

force understand what, specifically, do you think

OSEP could do to do a better job of helping the

states ensure compliance with the IDEA?

DR. GOULD: For example, if, as I listened

to some of the testimony earlier today and I have

read from previous hearings, if there are issues

around getting reports out on time. And if part of

what is underlying or causing our reports to be late,

it\'s because some of the earliest versions, the

initial versions of the report, have analysis and

facts in them that may be disputable and may have to

be withdrawn because the work done did not stand up

to scrutiny, analysis, and debate.

Perhaps if that continues to be an issue

with staff, then perhaps there might be some need to

help those folks in the area of data analysis and

writing for those reports, so that you don\'t go

through unnecessary redrafts and back‑and‑forth.

That\'s just one possible suggestion, but I\'d like to

talk to you about it further.

DR. PASTERNACK: I very much appreciate

that kind of dialogue and look forward to having you

and Jeff and others ‑‑ along those same lines, in

that same paragraph ‑‑ let me see if it was that same

paragraph.

I know that I read in the written

testimony that you provided to us, something about

the overuse of due process. I didn\'t have my

highlighter ‑‑ oh, it\'s the same sentence: \"Problems

essentially condone non‑compliance with the Act and

increase parental use of due process provisions.\"

We heard testimony earlier today that the

number of due process requests made, I believe,

represented .004 percent of the numbers of kids

receiving special education‑related services around

the country. I\'m curious about, apropos of what my

colleague, Dr. Fletcher, was asking you earlier, for

some specific outcome‑oriented data‑driven help here.

Is that a high level of usage of due

process, or what when you all were drafting this

report ‑‑ were you hoping that we would not see any

due process requests? I\'m just kind of curious for

some targets that we should ‑‑ that you all would

recommend that we look for at OSEP as a trigger that

there\'s an excessive number of due process or a high

number of due process cases being filed.

DR. GOULD: I don\'t think we were

referencing a high number of frequency; we just said

an increased level. We didn\'t specify a number.

We think that in many instances, parents

prefer not to go to due process. We don\'t think that

many of them have the cash, the \$10,000, \$12,000 or

\$15,000 to hire an attorney. We don\'t think they want

to do that; we don\'t think they\'re inclined to do

that.

We think that they\'d much prefer to work

things out with school systems, but in the absence of

an ability to try to get what the IEP says their son

or daughter should get, they\'re left with little

option.

They can either take what they\'re given or

not given, or try something else. And sometimes ‑‑

more times than is probably necessary, they will try

to opt for due process.

DR. PASTERNACK: Do you think that in the

reauthorization, there\'s an opportunity for us to

perhaps change some things about the law itself, that

would make it easier for families to get the services

that they\'re desperately seeking for their kids, and

perhaps by doing that, reduce the need for people to

resort to due process?

DR. GOULD: Probably.

DR. PASTERNACK: Would simplifying the law

be something that you would recommend we try to do?

DR. GOULD: I don\'t know what you mean by

simplifying. This is probably a conversation that we

need to have at another time.

DR. PASTERNACK: I look forward to that.

Dr. Burke, we have heard a great deal of

testimony concerned about the quality of special

eduction teachers across the country. What

recommendation would you make to OSEP in terms of

redesigning its personnel preparation funding in

order to help increase the quality of qualified

personnel to meet the needs of students with

disabilities across the country?

DR. BURKE: I\'ve made several

recommendations here today. I think part of the

problem is that many of the teachers people

experience out in the schools are actually not

trained at all.

For example, in my own state of Maryland,

two years ago we issued 3,000 provisional

credentials; 1400 of them were in special education.

And those people went right into the classroom.

They had emergency and provisional credentials, with

little or no preparation whatsoever.

That\'s part of what you\'re beginning to

hear through the school systems. Because of this

shortage crisis, we have a lot of extraordinarily

unqualified people that have gone onto the rolls.

I would guess that the programs that

you\'re funding through the personnel preparation

program, if you had 146 applications and you only

find 27, you have some of the most competitive, high‑

quality programs. I don\'t think the issue is the

ones that you\'re funding; I think the issue is much

broader in terms of where personnel are being

prepared.

Also, I think that the availability of

funding under Part D, because of this two‑year period

where there were no increases whatsoever, at the same

time as we saw increases in the Part B program and

more access to special education programs.

I think it helped to drive this crisis to

a more extreme point. So I think that what are the

useful suggestions for Part D and for OSEP?

One of them is funding. I think we are

recommending very strongly that funding be doubled,

at the very least; secondly, that you fund program

instead of project. I think that that way, you will

be able to impact more of what\'s going on in a

university and take credit for more of the teachers

who are actually prepared, which I think you should

be able to do.

I will impact many, many more people if

you take a program approach, as opposed to a project

approach. And I think then take those programs that

are of high quality, and hold them up so that others

can emulate them.

In other words, work in the area of

dissemination; work in the area of showing and

exposing those programs that are really, truly of

high quality, and then reinforce that concept. So I

think there are some very, very concrete steps that

can be taken.

The other idea with respect to augmenting

OSEP with additional personnel, others who might be

able to come in to assist, to help with some of that

review. That would do even more to help with that.

DR. PASTERNACK: As you probably are

aware, the Administration has put forward a proposal

to dramatically increase the amount of money for loan

forgiveness for both math, science, and special

education teachers. We certainly believe that\'s one

strategy which could help, and I know you\'ve made

some recommendations. I was kind of looking to go

above and beyond a couple. Let me get more specific,

perhaps.

Should we abandon the 75‑percent

requirement, that that 75 percent of that money that

would flow in personnel prep go to support the actual

students who are enrolled in those programs?

DR. BURKE: The 75 percent, I would

recommend and have recommended that you abandon it is

a fixed amount. If you go to program funding, you

may actually be able to support students indirectly

who don\'t receive direct financial assistance.

You might get more bang out of the

program, or out of your dollar invested, if you go in

that direction. There are other problems with that

75 percent.

For example, a graduate assistant doesn\'t

count in the 75 percent. Most universities at the

graduate level, support students with graduate

assistantships.

The graduate assistant doesn\'t count as

receiving student financial support under the way the

rules are construed right now. They are considered

staff of the university because they usually have a

20‑hour work requirement.

Also, if they are not graduate assistants,

they can\'t get health insurance for their families

and themselves. This is a fairly significant

disincentive, and I think it should go away.

I think it\'s important to review that

portion. The other part of it is to look at what is

the commitment the university is making to the

program. Are the really laying it on the line with

respect to support for faculty and staff?

I think those are some ideas that will

really help.

DR. PASTERNACK: We\'ve heard other

recommendations, in Nashville, specifically, to

change, dramatically, the peer review process now in

place. Would you support those recommendations?

DR. BURKE: I\'ve not seen the

recommendations from Nashville. I\'ve made some

comments myself. I\'ve read the workpaper that was

produced and submitted to OSEP on the peer review

panel.

I think the prime requisite for panelists

are that they have expertise on the subject being

reviewed; that they have experience with it; they

have independent knowledge, and that they are able to

make a judgment for you as the federal officer, as to

whether or not what you\'re seeing is of good quality,

state‑of‑the‑art, should be funded.

If you have other interests that you want

to put into that panel next with respect to

representation of other interests, then I think there

may be ways to do that. But if you\'re going to have

a program that\'s being reviewed, and you\'re going to

have three, four, or five people reviewing it, it\'s

absolutely imperative that they have real expertise

in reviewing those grants, because it begins there.

DR. PASTERNACK: There has been some

discussion about reducing the amount of directed

research and thereby increasing the amount of field‑

initiated research. As a yes/no, would you support

that recommendation?

DR. BURKE: I think there should be a

balance. I think you have to be in a position in

OSEP to be able to explore things that are really

pressing, issues that need to be looked at. You have

to be able to have that kind of discretion, and that

would be part of the leadership we\'d expect from

OSEP.

On the other hand, the field ‑‑ some of

the greatest ideas that we have are things that a

group of experts have not conceived of. I think it\'s

very important for people to be able to present their

ideas and receive support.

You may find that some of the most

creative things come from unsolicited proposals, so I

think a balance ‑‑

DR. PASTERNACK: Last question, Mr. Chair,

if you\'ll indulge me. To both of you, as you both

know, the National Academy of Sciences‑NRC report

talked about an issue we\'ve been aware of for many

years, the disproportionate representation of some

minority kids in some categories, especially

education in some part of the country.

From a personnel prep and just general

training perspective, what do you all think OSEP

should be doing to address the fact that particularly

African American students are over‑represented in the

category of mental retardation?

DR. BURKE: This is a very, very complex

question. As you correctly pointed out, the National

Academy of Sciences made a number of recommendations,

and, in fact, one of our faculty members served on

that group. We\'ve been able to have a discussion at

our own university with respect to that.

Part of the problem, I think, is clearly

the quality of the general educational program that

you find in many of the settings where these

youngsters are going to school. And we find that the

quality of special education, in many respects is

dependent upon the quality of general education

that\'s available.

Youngsters don\'t have good alternatives

all the time in the general program, and end up over‑

referred to special education, and I think the

problem starts there.

On the other hand, I think that because

we\'ve set up a system in special education to receive

children that are having difficulties in school,

we\'re open to over‑referrals with respect to special

education.

Specifically with regard to personnel

preparation, I think it\'s possible to prepare

teachers to be very, very sensitive to these issues,

to understand them, to understand what really

constitutes an appropriate referral, and how to win

the game.

So I guess, in sum, it\'s a very complex

issue. I think you can deal with part of it through

personnel preparation, part of it through improving

the general education that\'s available to children in

the schools.

DR. GOULD: I defer to Dr. Burke, because

he\'s qualified to speak to that issue. From my own

background teaching at Towson State University in

Maryland, it was apparent that there are man students

that went through the college of general education,

who had not been exposed to a number of different

ways to adapt different curricular instruction for

linguistically or culturally diverse students.

That is something that Towson and other

state colleges around the state of Maryland have made

improvements in, but we continue to be challenged.

Because of the continuing diversity around the

country, and for those geographic areas that have

school districts where there are students who may

speak 30 or 40 different languages, the teacher

colleges and the universities, in the personnel

preparation programs, have to be particularly on the

money in being able to address the complexity and

sophistication of the needs that those students,

linguistically and culturally, present to them, and

that is no easy task.

To the extent that you can target

personnel preparation programs, or even set

expectations up within grants that go to certain

geographic areas, if that\'s allowed to do that, I

would suggest that you consider those kinds of

approaches.

DR. COULTER: Executive Director Jones?

MR. JONES: There are a couple of

questions that I want to address: The first one is

for both of you. Actually, I think we can do both

for both of you.

As drawn from Dr. Gould\'s testimony

mentioning that parents, many parents will find

themselves confronted, when they arrive at an IEP

meeting with a completed IEP and a fait accompli

presented to them ‑‑ and you won\'t be surprised that

that is not the first time that this Commission has

heard that presented as something that goes on ‑‑ but

we\'ve also heard from administrators, chiefs, even

plaintiffs\' attorneys discussing that part of the

reason that seems to go on has to do with the fear of

litigation, and that the IEP is viewed as a

procedural blocking device, that at least we can

prove our plan is complete. The school is saying

that, and that by not having errors in that, we can

avoid being sued.

Interestingly, in San Diego a few days

ago, we heard from two plaintiffs, parents\'

attorneys, who said that, of course, they find that

of little relevance. They look for gross problems

such as lack of an IEP for cases when they pursue it.

My question for you, for both of you, is,

to what extent do you think that the IEP, as

educational tool and process, is undermined by fear

of litigation and the view among school personnel

that they want to use that as a way to prevent them

from being sued, as opposed to the educational tool?

DR. GOULD: We have not heard those

stories, and it saddens us to hear or learn that

school district personnel feel if they\'re put in that

position, on the one hand. On the other hand, I

guess in this day and age, I would venture to say I\'m

not surprised that that may be happening.

I think when those instances do occur, and

if they are frequent and if they can be identified or

possibly tracked back to a particular area, I think

that perhaps some attention needs to be paid to the

culture that\'s going on, the litigatory culture

that\'s going on in that area in that community.

I\'m not saying, obviously, that the

Commission is able to do that, undertake that, or

draw any conclusions about that, but obviously that

type of attention might be warranted, because that

serves no one well. And it particularly ill‑serves

children and their school personnel.

DR. BURKE: I think anytime a parent

assembles in a room with five, seven, or eight

individuals in a school, it can be very intimidating.

I think ‑‑ what can OSEP do with regard to that or

what could you do with respect to the

recommendations?

I think that the more school systems are

able to have a level of communication with the parent

before the actual IEP meetings, some understanding of

what\'s coming, what are the elements of that, I think

that would be very, very helpful, to the extent that

that can be accomplished.

The issue that we see is, after the IEP is

written, actually there are a number of elements with

respect to modifications, specialized instruction,

that are very difficult to see being implemented. In

other words, you have two elements of that, you have

the IEP as it\'s proposed and negotiated, and then you

have it as it\'s carried out.

So, I think there are two sides to that

issue.

MR. JONES: The other question that I

wanted to get to builds from one of the NCD\'s

recommendations around LRE and the drive to increase

LRE and maximize it. My question goes to when IDEA

was created, LRE was an unambiguous good. Children

were being excluded from schools, excluded from

classrooms.

Now we\'re reaching an era where there is

substantially more participation in the general

education environment by children with disabilities.

And there can become at times, at tension between the

outcome of a service and the related environment.

Let\'s say you have a program to assist

children with learning disabilities, and we\'ll say

that by objective research, that it demonstrates that

children who are in a particular type of pull‑out

environment where it is an intensive service delivery

with just a couple of other kids with disabilities

away from the general classroom, is markedly superior

to services received in a general ed classroom with

aids. That creates a bit of a tension with then

concept of LRE, because that child may not be in the

least restrictive environment when they\'re in that

pull‑out classroom, for, we\'ll say, even a couple of

hours or more a day.

How do you think that issue should resolve

itself from a policy perspective, if there\'s a

tension between the objective outcome that a child

has in terms of education outcome and the social

benefit and other benefits of LRE? Which one trumps

when there is tension?

DR. GOULD: Not meaning to be evasive, but

it\'s not clear from the factual situation you

described, what the crux of the tension is and why we

have the choice that we have. I just didn\'t

understand the question.

MR. JONES: Let me construct it this way:

If it turns out that the best way for a child to

maximize their outcomes in an educational sense, is

to have them in a segregated classroom away from

children without disabilities for large portions of

the day. That would clearly not be the least

restrictive environment for that child.

By putting them in the general classroom,

say, and having an aid assist them, just

hypothetically, let\'s work from that construct. What

should policymakers be looking at in terms of

creating policy that deals with that, if there\'s a

tension between having a less restrictive environment

and trading off for that, having a child have the

inferior educational outcomes?

DR. GOULD: I think the genius of the

IDEA, if you will, at least as it relates to LRE, is

that there is a presumption that placement in the

regular class should be the first consideration,

unless with supplementary aid, service and support,

that child can\'t learn.

Whether a child can maximize his or her

learning in a separate class or a separate placement,

may not necessarily be the correct test, at least in

terms of how we make policy in the situation you

described. If the child is not learning in the

regular class, then the IP team obviously should be

looking at that and trying to convene some meeting

with the parents and other support personnel to

determine whether, in fact, there needs to be a

change, and try to identify where else instruction

and support need to be provided.

Whether that, in fact, turns out to be a

separate class or segregated placement, again, is

going to be left up the IEP team and it should. And

there is a whole continuum of placements and services

between those, as you are aware, that they may need

to consider.

I think that\'s what the policy decisions

should be, and I think that\'s the genius of LRE, and

I think it remains to be seen, whether or not the

genius proves out.

MR. JONES: Dr. Burke?

DR. BURKE: I think that you\'re always

going to have that tension. You have tremendous

pressure on general education to produce achievement.

Now, with the \"No Child Left Behind,\" you\'re going to

have annual assessments performance outcomes in the

classroom that are going to be there.

So, general education is really under the

pressure to manifest achievement. That\'s certainly

true in my own state with the MSPAP tests that we\'ve

had.

On the other hand, inclusion, in many

respects, has a large socialization agenda. In other

words, we want children educated with their

chronologically‑appropriate peers; we don\'t want them

unnecessarily isolated or segregated. We have ample

evidence that if you do that, children really don\'t

learn the socialization skills; they really don\'t

work very well with their peers.

The tend, when they finish schooling, to

be very isolated and regressed, so inclusion is very

important. I would agree with Dr. Gould that there

is a genius in terms of the IEP coupled with the

concept of LRE, except that that genius only works if

you have competent people who are actually doing the

assessments, working with the parents, designing the

modification of the curriculum program, understanding

the school that the youngster is going to attend, and

understanding their needs and then working on a

program that\'s appropriate, that has the right

balance.

I think that where we run into our

greatest difficulties is where we retreat to some

sort of pro forma review for the IEP, where people

aren\'t necessarily skilled or don\'t know the child,

or don\'t understand the needs.

And so I think that in the ideal sense, it

will work, but there will always be a tension. And

from our perspective, our contribution to that is to

prepare the most competent teacher and specialist

that we can, who can understand what really needs to

be done to represent the child.

We like to feel that the teacher is both

an advocate, as well as a representative of the

school system in terms of the IEP. They really have

to wear two hats. It\'s very important that they be

able to do that and be competent.

MR. JONES: Thank you very much.

DR. FLETCHER: Just to clarify, Mr. Chair,

both of you are essentially testifying that schools

need to have access to a continuum of services and

address the issue of the least restrictive

environment through the interdisciplinary team.

Isn\'t that what I understood?

DR. GOULD: That\'s what the law says.

DR. FLETCHER: But your recommendation,

specifically, is that school needs to have a

continuum?

DR. GOULD: The recommendation is that the

law needs to be followed, as it\'s written.

DR. FLETCHER: That wasn\'t what I heard

you say. I heard you use the word, \"continuum,\"

which is why I\'m picking up on it. And what I\'m

hearing you say is that the schools need to have

options, so that the interdisciplinary team will be

able to avail themselves of what the child\'s needs

are.

DR. GOULD: Yes.

DR. BURKE: I did not make a

recommendation with respect to that. My testimony

was more with respect to other issues.

DR. FLETCHER: I didn\'t hear what you

said; I\'m sorry.

DR. BURKE: Another problem with the

microphone. I did not make a recommendation with

respect to LRE, just to clarify that point. But I

did testify here today about it, yes.

DR. FLETCHER: Just now I thought I heard

you say that schools need to have a continuum of

services.

DR. BURKE: I think schools need to be

responsive to the needs of the child, as identified

through the assessment process related to the IEP,

and, most commonly, that\'s found to be a range of

ability in terms of personnel and services that will

attend to the child\'s needs.

DR. FLETCHER: Thank you.

DR. COULTER: Gentlemen, we thank you for

your testimony. We appreciate your attention to our

questions. We are now going to shift to the public

testimony section.

With regard to that, I need to review with

you, the Commission rules as they relate to public

testimony: Each speaker will have three minutes.

Ms. Munoz, who is taking a position at the front of

the room, is our timekeeper. She will give you

indications of when you have two minutes left, one

minute left, and 30 seconds left. We would ask your

courtesy and cooperation to adhere to the three‑

minute time limit for purposes of maintaining the

integrity of the Commission\'s rules, we will ask you

to stop speaking at the end of three minutes.

Our first speaker today is Peter Toby

Brown, to be followed by Sharon England.

MR. BROWN: Good afternoon, honorable

members of the President\'s Commission. My name is

Toby Brown, and I\'m the parent of an eight‑year old

boy with autism. I work at the United States Patent

Office.

The PTO is a Federal Government

performance‑based organization. The PTO strives to

excel in all facets of customer service. One of our

goals is to return all phone calls within 24 hours.

Patent examiners, support staff, and PTO executives,

each strive to meet that 24‑hour goal. Patent

examiners face penalties if they do not return

customers\' calls.

OSEP, on the other hand, is like a black

hole to the customers it is supposed to serve,

special education children and their parents and

guardians that advocate for them. Here are few

examples of OSEP\'s customer service:

OSEP conducted reviews of special

education in Virginia in 1989 and 1995. The reports

portrayed a bleak landscape for special education

compliance in Virginia. OSEP was supposed to monitor

Virginia again in 2000.

I worked on a team with other parents, and

we prepared a report on the Virginia Department of

Education. The cover letter is attached to the

report I handed in with my comments.

The report was submitted to OSEP in

January of 2001, and included 31 pages covering the

five main areas of concern addressed in OSEP\'s 1995

report: FAPE, ESY, secondary transition, parental

involvement, and general supervision.

The 31 pages referenced reams of evidence

that were provided in accompanying binders. We

offered ourselves for further comment, and/or

insight, but never heard anything from OSEP.

Subsequently, Virginia\'s P&A, DRVD, conducted a

similar analysis of specific problems noted in 1995,

and VDOE had done to rectify the noted problems.

VDOE found that the problems had largely

not been addressed, and that the VDOE could only a

trace of evidence that any problem had, in fact, been

addressed at all. VDOE submitted its evidence in a

report to OSEP in 2001.

I\'m the Chairman of the Advisory Council

to DRVD. At a meeting yesterday, the VDOE indicated

that OSEP had never contacted DRVD regarding its

report.

Last year VDOE submitted documentation to

OSEP, and ultimately OSEP decided that no site visit

was necessary. All was well in Virginia.

Rather than helping parents and children,

OSEP acts as a deterrent to speedy dispute

resolution. The Virginia Department of Education, in

partnership with OSEP, now employs a strategy wherein

it asks OSEP whether it has to do something it really

does not want to do.

I reference two due process requests, one

filed by me, and a separate request filed by DRVD.

Each request for due process resulted in VDOE sending

a letter off to OSEP, requesting guidance.

It has been 16 months since VDOE mailed

the letter regarding my request. There has been no

response. It was 171 days before VDOE appointed a

hearing officer in DRVD\'s case.

The bottom line is that OSEP is not

serving its customers, is nonresponsive to all kinds

of requests. Many parents wonder what the utility of

OSEP actually is.

Either dismantle it or give it the tools,

the power, and, most importantly, a directive to hold

the states, and ultimately the LEAs accountable.

DR. COULTER: Thank you, Mr. Brown.

Sharon England, to be followed by Bill East.

MS. ENGLAND: Good afternoon, I\'m Sharon

England. I\'m an attorney who practices in the

metropolitan Washington area of Virginia. I never

intended to practice in the area of special

education. I was actually a social worker for 20

years in the field of child protection before I got

my law degree. I intended to represent abused and

neglected children; I never intended to be a special

ed attorney.

And that\'s pretty much what I have been

dragged into, and I usually tell people, god and the

juvenile court judges and various other advocates

dragged me, kicking and screaming, into practicing

special education law.

I can tell by many of your questions here

that you do have an interest in some of these issues

that concern me, practicing and representing children

in foster care. There are just numerous numbers of

those children involved in special education issues.

In fact, there are studies done in

Baltimore and Chicago that estimated that 30 percent

of children in foster care are also represented in

the special education population. And it was through

my representation of children in that category that I

learned the area of special education law.

One of the things that I discovered is

that there are many violations of procedural

protections for children who are in foster care, for

instance, getting consent of the natural parent. In

the six years I have been practicing, I very rarely

have seen parents at IEP meetings. In the six years

I\'ve been practicing, I\'ve seen three appointments of

surrogate parents, which is required by federal

regulations. Two of them were in this past year.

Cross jurisdictional issues: When

children who live in the City of Richmond are

transferred to foster homes in other counties, you

have horrific types of problems in terms of getting

those children prompt special education services.

Many foster parents will say that foster

home placements will disrupt because the children\'s

special education needs are so great, they can\'t keep

up with them. As you know, guardian ad litem

appointment is required in all matters involving

children in foster care. That\'s predominantly what I

do, is represent children as a guardian ad litem.

Yet guardians ad litem are not mentioned

in any special education regulation as a possible

resource for children as advocates in special

education proceedings. I spend most of my time at

IEP meetings, many times fighting challenges about my

presence there. Certainly the issue comes up when I

try to file any kind of administrative action.

Finally, the other area is the area of

delinquency. This is an area where I have really

apparently developed an expertise, as a result of a

juvenile court judge\'s finding that many of the

children who come before them because of charges of

delinquency, invariably what they find is that their

delinquent acts are pretty much exclusively to

school settings, and as a result, children are pretty

much well‑behaved in a community, but when they get

to school, that\'s when they\'re being charged with

crimes.

When you pull those kids\' files and you

look at them, you\'ll find that your children who are

unidentified or identified as having learning

disabilities at a very young age, they actually have

good attendance, good parental participation. By the

time they get to middle school, they are woefully

behind, and they are now being found eligible as

emotionally disturbed or mentally retarded, and,

unfortunately, I think it\'s usually due because they

weren\'t identified.

I\'d like to call your attention to what I

think is a really good article called \"Caught Between

Two Systems,\" in the Yale Law Review, that really, I

think, has a very thorough discussion of these

issues. Thank you.

DR. COULTER: Thank you, Ms. England.

Bill East, to be followed by Paul Marchand.

MR. EAST: I\'m Bill East, National

Director of the National Association of Directors of

Special Education. I have had 26 years this year in

working with OSEP in a variety of capacities. I want

to thank you for listening this morning to Alice

Parker and Barbara Gantwerk, and other state

directors around the country at earlier hearings. I

support their testimony.

Very quickly, I want to address five areas

relating to OSEP: Number one, this is related to

OSEP staff. I have found them over the years to be

very competent and caring, and I encourage you to

encourage the Secretary to properly staff and provide

resources to OSEP to do their job. Most people I

work with there are doing two or three full‑time jobs

at the present time.

Two, send a clearer message about the

purpose and the focus of OSEP. That should be

improving student results, as well as the protection

of rights. We also can make sure that OSEP supports

the maximum flexibility to states to support regional

resource centers, parent training information

centers, and IDEA partnerships.

Three, we need to have OSEP focus their

work by placing in the amendments to IDEA, clearer

directions on what you want states to do. This will

help reduce the need for lengthy and burdensome

regulations, and also reduce the need for OGC

involvement at the federal level and lawyers\'

involvement at the state and local levels.

Four, speed up the transition of the

focused monitoring system that was described to you

this morning by Leslie Margolis.

And, five, focus more energy on personnel

development. If we don\'t put a quality teacher in

every classroom and a quality administrator in every

school, all this other won\'t matter.

A couple of suggestions there is to look

at the funding mechanism that would require higher

ed, the SEAs, local districts, to work together and

provide more non‑competitive funds to states, for

example, the state improvement grants. Thank you

very much.

DR. COULTER: Thank you, Mr. East. Paul

Marchand.

MR. MARCHAND: Good afternoon and hello

again. After Miami I want to say to you immediately

that having not been at, but heard a lot about New

York and Nashville, and today you are back on track

in regard to bringing the real experts to talk about

the real issues, and I\'m delighted to see that that\'s

the case.

I\'d like to make two points: One deals

with the resources in OSEP, and the other is the

resources around Part D. When you look at the

situation, 6.5 million children, hundreds of

thousands of schools, tens of thousands of school

systems and 107 FTEs at OSEP, four monitoring teams,

an incredible technical assistance initiative that

needs to be expanded, there is no doubt that OSEP

needs much, much more staff if we are going to have

any expectation that they\'re going to do the job and

do it right.

I would hope that this Commission strongly

encourages this Administration to put in the

Department\'s salary and expense budget in the future,

enough resources to have OSEP be able to do what we

would all expect them to be able to do.

Lastly, in regards to Part D, almost every

speaker today that I heard, talked to some extent

about how the various parts of Part D, be it

personnel preparation, be it research, be it any of

the other factors, are so critical to making Part B,

and to some extent, Part C, with regard to preschool,

work.

Yet we have an infinitesimally small

percentage of the monies that go into Part D, which

is the foundation for Part B, being made available.

Unless we do something very different, including the

possibility of creating a percentage of Part B sliced

into Part D, the growth is unlikely to come through

the annual appropriations where it becomes a game.

So I would strongly encourage you to think

about a way to create, through Part B, some mechanism

to make Part D much more real. Thank you very much.

DR. COULTER: Thank you, sir. Ladies and

gentlemen, this concludes our agenda for this task

force meeting. Pardon me just a second.

Libby, do you want to try? You\'re not on

the list.

Ladies and gentlemen, one more three

minutes. Are you ready?

MS. NEALIS: I\'ll be very brief. I\'m

Libby Nealis with the National Association of School

Psychologists. I\'m pleased to remind you all that

you have already heard from school psychologists in

many of the other meetings, so I won\'t elaborate on

the psychological services, academic, and behavioral

interventions that school psychologists can provide

for students in special education and students in the

general ed curriculum.

But I did want to make just a couple of

comments on OSEP, particularly with regard to

technical assistance. I think this is a critical

area that needs to be strengthened, and that OSEP is

already doing a great job, but that dissemination of

these technical assistance materials and greater

production of technical assistance materials and

guidance to states need to be focused on.

Right now, the IDEA partnerships that have

been funded for OSEP, of which my organization is a

part, is producing these types of materials, but

they\'re not necessarily getting down to the schools

and to the districts that can benefit from their use.

Also, there is a lot of information on the

OSEP website regarding things such as positive

behavioral supports and other types of disciplines

and interventions that can be utilized, and I don\'t

think there\'s a wide dissemination or knowledge that

these are out there, as well.

With regard to other technical assistance

and guidance that OSEP can provide, I think stronger

guidance on interagency agreements for states ‑‑ this

is in the law; it\'s under methods of insuring

services, and yet it\'s one of the things that we\'ve

heard states have but are not implemented.

I know that we understand that agencies

working together is a challenge, but it can be done

and is being successfully done in many communities

and other many models. And I encourage the

Commission to look at those and for OSEP to improve

the ability to get those models out to schools.

Also with regard to interagency

agreements, not only working with the juvenile

justice, mental health, and education agencies, but

also with the state Medicaid agencies, I think, is a

critical point. I know that your fellow Commissioner

Chambers has already brought to your attention, the

Medicaid issues. I would strongly encourage looking

into that. It\'s not only one of the areas where

there needs to be greater collaboration and

coordination and guidance and technical assistance,

but could alleviate some of the funding issues and

meeting the needs of students.

With regard to personnel preparation, I

have heard a lot about interdisciplinary teams.

That\'s great. I want to emphasize that related

services personnel are critical members of these

interdisciplinary teams. And there has been a lot of

talk about loan forgiveness and personnel preparation

assistance with regard to math and science and

special education teachers. We\'d like to add that

related services are also suffering from shortages

and are critical in providing the services under

IDEA, and helping schools implement those services

and implement other school‑wide programs that can

benefit the entire student population. Thank you

very much.

DR. COULTER: Thank you, Ms. Nealis. This

does conclude our agenda, and we are adjourned.

Thank you very much for your participation.

(Whereupon, at 2:55 p.m., the Commission

hearing was adjourned.)