Special education screening procedures and practices

Abstract
Students with disabilities or suspected disabilities are evaluated by schools to determine whether they are eligible for special education services and, if eligible to determine, what services will be provided. In many states, the results of this evaluation also affect how much funding assistance the school will receive to meet the students.  This study provides a brief detail historical background on special education screening.  It focuses on the philosophies of leaders in education who have promoted special education services for students. It identifies the Montessori method as significant because it adopts an approach to the screening issue which uniquely views all students as special and deserving of individualized education.
Overview
How Screening was Before Becoming Recognized by Law
Part of why special education became an issue in America was the implementation of the standard grade, which “was first introduced in Massachusetts in 1847 in response to the organizational needs of the evolving school system” (Winzer 328). The standard grade implied that all students of the same age were expected to master the same skills and advance at the same time to the next set of curricula. One of the first leading proponents of special education in North America was the psychologist J. E. Wallace Wallin. Part of the Progressive Movement of the early 20th century. Wallin challenged the standard grade concept and “discounted as myth the idea that all children should fit within a standard grade and that schools should assign children to the same grade level on the basis of their ages (Winzer 328). Wallin also highlighted some of the characteristics of special needs students and showed that students with learning disabilities were “almost always irritated, disheartened, depressed or embittered by the progress and not infrequently jibes and ridicule of the normal pupils” (Wallin 390). Wallin asserted that the standard grade concept should be abandoned and that curricula should be more flexible so that a variety of students could receive an education that was tailored to meet their needs. For students who were particularly deficient, he called for “special classes” and applied the term “orthogenic” and “orthophrenic” to the students who exhibited learning disabilities.
By 1900, 20% of all students in public schools in the U.S. were special needs students (Winzer) but through the support of proponents like Wallin, “the first class for mentally retarded children opened in Atlanta in 1915” (Winzer 329). Early identification or screening was conducted through the use of IQ tests, which were deemed “crucial to the advance of special segregated classes” (Winzer 329). The methods for screening relied entirely upon “mental tests, properly used and properly interpreted” (Terman 5). The result was that by 1916, a clinical set of criteria was provided to educators for screening for students with special needs. The IQ test was adopted in several states as a legal basis for determining which students should be assigned to specially segregate special needs classes.
The rise of special needs classes, however, was met with backlash especially among the eugenicists of the time: they wanted to implement their own strategy for solving the problem of the “feebleminded,” as these students were often called. The eugenicists’ solution was to breed them out of existence using methods of forced sterilization. Teaching these students was viewed by opponents of special classes for the learning disabled as a waste of resources and a drain on the national economy (Winzer), yet the number of classes continued to grow: Boston had 9 special needs classes in 1912 and 141 special needs classes by 1941. Along with the growth of these classes, the categorization of special needs students also expanded. Students were “tested, labeled, and slotted into ungraded, auxiliary, opportunity, open-air, steamer, welfare, and other types of classes” (Winzer 331). Screening for hearing impairment did not arrive until the 1920s, but visual impairment was screened for as early as 1899 using a visual function test known as the Snellen chart. This type of screening facilitated educators in identifying students with special sight needs and aided reformers in the development of special classes for the blind or visually impaired. Children with speech impairment issues were identified by signs of “lisping, stammering, and stuttering” and were assigned to special classes as well in the (Winzer 332). Teaching special needs students required a new curriculum. Teachers were specially trained: by 1930, sixteen states required that teachers have special certification to give special education (Winzer 334).
Philosophers and Screening
Dr. Jean Itard and Anne Sullivan are regarded as pioneers in the field of special education (Chia, Kee). Itard was the chief medical officer at the National Institute for the Deaf and Dumb in France in the early 19th century. He rose to prominence for his famed endeavor to educate a severely disabled feral child named Victor, who was said to be raised by wolves. While Itard was working with a child who had suffered from severe mental and behavioral disorders, less severe forms of learning disabilities, such as problems with “task and setting” have been used by teachers to identify special needs students (Mock, Jakubecy, Kauffman). Anne Sullivan was a teacher who gained notoriety for being the tutor of Helen Keller to finally break through using a simple form of communication (touch) and make contact with Helen. Both instructors focused on sense data and sensory information as a means of reaching and communicating with special needs children. What their research showed was that special needs children typically have sensory issues that can be identified. Methods of screening stemmed from this approach to the child’s own experience or sense of the world. According to their philosophies, IQ would have been a poor indicator of whether or not the child needed special education: the indicator was the child’s use of the five senses and whether or not they were being applied. Behavioral assessment was integral to determining which children were learning disabled. The disability, moreover, was viewed as an educational one—not a mental one—by Itard, Sullivan, Sequin and Montessori.
Dr. Edouard Seguin worked with Itard to focus on “education through specific sensory motor exercises” (Mangal 34). Maria Montessori was influenced by the work of Seguin in the following century. Montessori focused on self-learning and institutionalized the concept of a student learning at his or her own pace. In this sense, all children were special needs students. There was no need to differentiate them or to segregate them (as became the practice in America in the early 20th century). As self-learners, they commanded the pace of their own education. The teacher could facilitate that education and push the students to tap their potential—but by tapping into the student’s innate desire to learn and know, the Montessori method provided educators with a new philosophical approach to education—namely that all education was special education.
Application
From IQ testing to behavioral assessment, the method of screening for learning disability has fluctuated over the years. Physical tests that test for visual or hearing impairment are relatively easy to perform and highlight a real sense issue that can be discerned and addressed. It is when no apparent sense issue is identified that the trouble begins—especially for parents who do not want their children to be identified or labeled as learning disabled because of the risk of being held back, segregated from the class, or having a stigma attached to their child that could haunt them their entire life. The threat of stigma is very real for many parents and students today.
It is especially all the more tricky considering the rights of parents and students. As Dewey notes, parents have rights about how their children are labeled and identified in schools and it is important for educators to include parents in the process of screening for learning disability. The modern process of screening is particularly important because schools have been put on notice by various court cases regarding the responsibilities they owe to students and parents. Burriola v. Greater Toledo YMCA (2001), Community Consolidated School District #9 v. John F. (2000) and Cedar Rapids v. Garret F. (1999) are just a few examples of cases where schools have been required to provide special needs education and to do appropriate screening in order to detect whether or not a student with behavioral issues is indeed in need of special education services. The policy of manifest determination, adhered to in many school districts, is that administrators and educators must respond to a request made by a parent to assess a student who has been in trouble for behavioral issues. The school must do an assessment of the child to see if the student is having behavioral issues because of a learning disability. In many cases, the student’s learning disability is not discovered otherwise. In many cases, students with learning disabilities are simply passed along year after year because the concept of social promotion (a student should stay with his or her peers in the same age group for the entirety of their academic career) is believed by some to be more socially beneficial for the student than the concept of retention (holding the student back a year because of failure). In either case, the student’s needs may be ignored as the student is assessed by standard grade measurements—which was anathema to John Edward Wallace Wallin, the leading proponent of special needs education in America in the early 20th century.
As Frey has observed, the problems of utilizing either social promotion or retention do not get at the heart of what it means to educate. Montessori was closer to the ideal when she promoted the concept of self-learning and developed an educational philosophy in which all education could be viewed as special. Yet, the Montessori method continues to be held to the margins of the educational system. Public school systems are still very much connected to the antiquated systems of thought that dominated the 20th century with regard to special needs students: segregation—which leads to the problem of funding (segregated students must have their own classrooms, teachers—who must have their own training, schools—which must be validated and certified, and so on). The expenses begin to pile up faster than pensions. This expense can be crippling and can underscore the political dominoes that fall whenever the topic of No Child Left Behind comes up: in most cases, learning disabled students are simply being ignored because of purse-related issues. At play in the No Child Left Behind era of education (currently still on-going under a different name) are the educational philosophies of Adler and Holt—the former asserting a democratic ideal and a call for standardized, uniform educational standards for all, the latter calling for individualized education (Koonce). The impetus to educated special needs students falls on the teacher, unless the parent takes an issue with how the student is being treated, in which case manifest determination is triggered, and authorities begin the routine of actually examining the student for signs of a learning disability.
Issues
For a student today who is having behavioral problems at school, a team of teachers and administrators will implement the process of manifest determination in order to assess whether the student is indeed learning disabled. That process will include obtaining data about the child along with whatever diagnostic testing is available; teachers will be consulted, observations will be made, placement information will be obtained, and an overall picture of the child’s history and background will be compiled so that the context of the child’s behavior is thoroughly investigated (Office of Specialized Services).
Reschly suggests that this process of manifest determination is appropriate as it requires educators to examine the history of the child when identifying whether the student has a learning disability. This method is essentially the one that Anne Sullivan took with Helen Keller: by understanding the history of the child and realizing that a learning disability was the issue, Sullivan was able to construct a new method of educating the girl that was unique and wholly individualized. From there, Helen was off to the races, learning rapidly and at a pace that was set by herself: she was catching up for lost time having finally been given the tools to understand the world around her, communicate effectively, and obtain information previously denied her. The disability that Helen had was sensory—not mental. If the senses are used to educate the mind, as Itard believed, then the proper screening method for identifying students with a learning disability is one that considers the history of the child and that examines whether there are sensory issues that require attention.
Since learning disabilities can manifest in myriad ways—whether from an inability to sit still in a desk to an inability to take a test—it is important for educators to understand the student and the student’s unique needs. This approach suggests implicitly that the standardized goals of the Department of Education are unrealistic for all students because they do not take into consideration that many students (the figure was 20% in 1900) do not learn in the same manner as the majority of students.
Building on the philosophy of Montessori is Morgan, who views the label of learning disability as a type of “psychic prison” that locks the learner and his or her peers into a way of thinking that is antithetical to actual education. Morgan defines psychic prisons as “favored ways of thinking and acting become traps that confine individuals within socially constructed worlds and prevent the emergence of other worlds” (211). Such prisons are analogous to the prison of the mind that Plato identified in his allegory of the cave. In the allegory, the people who live in the cave think they are seeing real life as they watch shadows dance on the wall. It is not until they turn around and exit the cave that they realize that life extends beyond the shadows on the wall. And it is not until they begin the climb upward that they realize that the source of light above is the ultimate essence that should be pursued. For Morgan and educators who follow in this same line of thinking, screening for learning disabilities is problematic because it narrowly defines and limits students. Instead of allowing that all students are different, have different needs, and have different skills and methods of learning, educators are obliged to view all students from a standard arbitrarily set by the Department of Education. Because of this standard, all stakeholders in education are locked into watching shadows on the wall instead of pursuing the actual essence of education on a case-by-case basis. Again, the proponents of standardization will point to funding as one of the main reasons for why standardized education is essential—but funding is unlikely to be there in the future anyway. There is also the problem of inaccurate diagnosis of disabilities that can plague students, teachers, parents and schools. Screening methods are not foolproof. This is why it is important to identify the goals that stakeholders in education want to pursue: knowing them will help educators, parents, students, administrators and policy makers make decisions that are in the best interest of the learner. The functional behavioral assessment (FBA) is a method of screening that puts the interests of the student at the forefront and is in line with the goals of IDEA. It is a method in which, ideally, the entire school and all stakeholders can participate in.
Goals
IDEA is the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. IDEA supports the concept of individualized education programs, which can be organized to adhere to the concept of FBA (Drasgow, Bradley, Shriner). The FBA process begins with the school utilizing it identifying the target behavior that it seeks for the student: this is the desired goal. This approach is in line with the methods used by Itard, Sullivan, Montessori and others because it focuses directly on the student instead of on a standard. The second step in the FBA process is to identify the functions of the target behavior using both direct and indirect measures.
The FBA screening process aligns well with IDEA, which is essentially a preventive approach to education. The purpose of the IDEA program is to identify learning disabilities early on so that years of frustrated learning experiences can be prevented. And while the concept is a good one in theory, in practice it presents several problems—not the least being the fact that it consumes a great deal of resources and energy.
The issues that educators are facing today are more financial than ever before. As states continue to cut into teachers’ pensions, the incentives for teaching are dwindling: the resources are simply not available for schools to operate at such a high level. Instead of trying to reconcile the philosophies of Holt and Adler by providing an educational system that is both democratic and individualized, that is both standardized and attentive to the needs of learning disabled students, education administrators should consider the Montessori method, which is based on the philosophies of Itard, Sullivan and even Wallin. The idea is that every student is unique and comes to the process of education as a special individual. There is no need to categorize or label all learners: the idea should be to gauge what goals are possible for the learner on a case by case basis.
Conclusion
The history of special education and the screening process shows that in essence, all students are special and every learner has unique needs. What Montessori did to make her method of education so unique was that she recognized this point: it is not only the feral children like Victor (raised by wolves) who are in need of specialized education. Helen Keller is an extreme example but one that shows how the mind of the child can be perfectly fine while the sensory receptors are blocked. Overcoming that blockage is what a good teacher will be able to do. Performing the functional behavioral assessment, which requires all stakeholders in education to assist in the process and construct the background history of the learner, can aid in applying an adequate screening method that will help teachers to identify special needs students. However, in the end, the method that is likely to work best is the one proposed by Montessori—because in it all education is special education.

Terms and Concepts
Functional behavioral assessment: a method of screening for learning disabilities that employs the aid of stakeholders in education as they work together to compile a contextualized background of the learner.
Manifest Determination: The process by which education stakeholders begin a review of a student who has demonstrated behavioral problems in class in order to assess whether the student has a learning disability
Sensory: Having to do with the senses; how information is obtained through the direct stimulation of one of the five senses—taste, touch, hearing, sight, smell
Screening: A method used to discern the nature of the student’s impediment to learning
Special Education: Education that is individualized to fit the needs of the learner

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