Equity in Special Ed
In most school districts, the general and special education staff rarely interact with each other. Through our root cause process, we worked with a cross district team that included general and special education teachers, administrators, content specialists, etc., and more often than not there were disconnects in the conversation due to a limited understanding among practitioners regarding what constitutes a disability. General education teachers tended to express the belief that special education maintains the “magic fairy dust” that will “fix” the learning capacity and outcomes of students. Some of this belief may be due to the reality that prior to the addition of response to intervention in IDEA 2004, special education processes were perceived as organized to provide services to students who fell outside of the normal curve of academic performance.
