Evolutions in Special Education

Evolution of Special Education: Pre-1950s to Present Special Education Evolutions Special reduction has made tremendous evolutions since its inception. To effectively understand the current state of special education in public education, it is necessary to consider the full trajectory and how the perspectives on special education have developed over the years. The first special education programs were target at "at risk" children who primarily resided in urban slums and ghettos after a public education was made compulsory in the United States.

They taught manual skills such as carpentry or metal work while other programs focused on teaching moral lessons to minorities. Later, special education began to focus more on children with disabilities. Although there were students that had physical and mental disabilities in the nineteenth century, making specific provisions for the inherent challenges that these students faced did not became a common educational priority until the 1940s.

Since this time, the understanding of the needs of children with physical and mental disabilities has gone through rapid evolutions as the effectiveness of special education has improved relative to these needs. This analysis will look at the state of special education before the 1950s to the present to point out some of the achievements that this field of education has made. Special Education Evolutions The early development of special education can be traced back to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The focus of special education was not so much on education however; instead it considered more of an effort to make social provisions for "defective" children as they were perceived at the time. There was an effort to remove these students from the emerging public schooling systems so that so-called "normal" children could focus on their studies. There was also the notion present that disabled children could best be helped by the emerging specialist class that could better accommodate their specific weaknesses better than the traditional classroom.

"The development of special education in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was linked to a number of complex factors, not least of which was the emergent and sometimes competing professionalism of teachers and doctors and psychologists and a growth of official interest in the health of schoolchildren (Armstrong, 2002)" The first classrooms for disabled children in England for example, introduced with the opening of a special class for deaf children by the London School Board in 1874, followed by the 1893 Elementary Education (Blind and Deaf Children) Act (Armstrong, 2002).

The public education system in the United States emerged from reasoning that most people are not familiar with. It was less for egalitarian or liberal values, and more for an opportunity to impose a level of social control. However, the social control that was instituted was focused on teaching common values that included self-discipline and tolerance for other ethnic groups. Since the U.S.

population was so heavily diversified by ethnic background as well as religious beliefs and other differences, these groups need to learn to live together in relative harmony and teaching children to value tolerance was an effective means to spread these specific value throughout the population. It was in this environment the first special education programs that specialized in certain disabilities appeared in the educational system. The first specialized programs were targeted at specific disabilities, such as blindness or deafness, and were generally private institutions.

These programs were relatively rare and difficult for parents to both afford as well as find access to. It wasn't until the civil rights movement in the U.S. that originated in the mid-twentieth century and demand that children with disabilities be provided a free and "appropriate" education (Aron & Loprest, 2012). Furthermore, there were also provisions cited that called on the students to be taught in the "least restrictive" setting.

The mid-twentieth century led to a period in which there were major evolutions in the quality and outcomes of special education programs. Researchers note that the three biggest changes to special education include (Lloyd & Llloyd, 2015): 1. Deinstitutionalization 2. Provisions of legal protections for individuals with disabilities 3. And an emphasis on evidence-based practices. Before this revolution in special education, students would be institutionalized in dorm rooms and separated from the rest of the students.

Through a series of reforms that largely grew out of the negative publicity associated with the living conditions in these facilities, the United States went through a period of deinstitutionalization in which special education students were placed into more normalized environments. Around the same time other changes began taking place. Advocates for special education children, mainly parents and caregivers, began lobbying for children to have access to adequate schooling and other resources. Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, special education children had few legal protections that were available to them.

However, with exposure to the problem and a handful of court cases, the rights allotted to these children were greatly expanded. Public schools now had to make provisions for special education that was mandated by law and parents were more involved in their children's education. Despite these two enormous developments for the state of special education, one of the greatest evolutions was the role of researchers using the scientific method to develop evidence-based practices.

Evidence-based practices have improved the quality of care in a range of different professions including everything from nursing, to special education, to a risk-children or juvenile offenders. However, these practices require ongoing training, robust data collection, organizational changes, and adequate funding and in many states the funding or the culture does not effectively promote this approach to in all situations (Seave, 2011).

However, by building best practices that are based upon research and evidence, researchers and practitioners built a body of work that included different methods that were shown to work better than others and backed by evidence. This significantly improved the quality of education that was provided to students with special needs. Before the revolution in special education began to take place in the mid-century the primary question was access to education. However, with deinstitutionalization and law reform children with special needs began to have more educational opportunities.

After these children finally gained equal access to adequate educational opportunities, the next challenge dealt with the effectiveness of the programs available to them. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) ensured students with disabilities were educated, but it did little to influence, regulate, or assess the effectiveness of services provided (Spaulding, 2009). Yet after about a half century of applying the evidence-based practices approach, the quality of education has undergone major improvements through testing and experimentation to see what works the best for children with special needs.

Conclusion In the early days of compulsory education for the general population in the United States there were little if any provisions for children with special needs. Even after.