A couple of more things for people to chew on-

Two nice pieces by Jim and Gary (out of the UK) geared toward more of an international audience.

It is an old issue now gone international countries signing on to the International Convention for the Rights of People with Disabilities- (CRPD) out of the UN- which is pro-inclusion but not so pro- special education as conceptualized in the US in IDEA. And sped is under attack in the US as “racist” or “ableist” by the DisCrit crowd- the corollary of CRT for disability- unfortunately- all the Crits are rooted in ideology (DistCrit, QuantCrit, LatCrit, QueerCrit, along with CRT and Critical legal studies- but are expressly anti-liberal and anti-science- as the root- Critical Theory, comes out of the Frankfurt School of Marxist Criticism- and rejects a big part of enlightenment based science- will have to discuss this one with beer. More old issues that have resurfaced in contemporary forms…for ELs- the LatCrit folks will occasionally surface with critiques that teaching English is a form of “colonization.” And there is even a related movement called “Science must Fall” as science itself is a form of Western colonization.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_School

There is also proposals by related groups to move special education into a Title program- which would effectively turn it into remedial education end entitlements to FAPE - and second, to do away with categories of LD and EBD.

It looks like Dr. Hallahan’s piece for the special issue we did is striking a chord (fyi- Dan is one of the people who developed the term LD and much of the research around it).

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09362835.2024.2300192

One is a UVA grad and the other a Kansas grad on this blog…funny she references “He is dismissive of claims that PBIS is implemented in ways that perpetuate racism and ableism and poses that these claims are made without evidence.” Fyi- There is a push to brand PBIS racist/ableist as well as sped by the “Crits”- “white supremacy with a hug”. And “saviorism” is a new word to me- if you throw ‘ism onto a word- then it makes the argument valid I suppose these days.

https://teachingisintellectual.com/responding-to-welcome-to-the-destruction-of-special-education-in-the-name-of-ideology-by-dan-hallahan/

Amazing this is the stuff being endorsed by a UVA and a KU graduate-

https://teachingisintellectual.com/read/articles/

Also attached is one of Gary’s pieces about “inclusive special education”- trying chart a middle way between inclusion and special education that I very much like…making the distinction between inclusion and “full inclusion”- he has a great textbook also call Inclusive Special Education- borrows from the Finnish Model as well- if I can get Hannu Savolainen on the speaker series-I will have him give an overview of it- too bad he had to pull out at the last minute visiting us- as they adopted a three tier model country wide in Finland that integrates inclusion and sped into it.

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4939-1483-8

No need to respond- it is academic drama but good to know where the minefields are- only old curmudgeons in the field that are quite happy where they are and enjoy some degree of academic freedom can really speak into these issues without possible negative consequences for their careers right now in this very strange time in academia. Our focus is actually on addressing some of the similar justice oriented issues (e.g, school to prison issues, equity, antisocial behavior, over/under representation, reading, literacy, etc. etc.)- so in some, likely many ways- we are in the same intellectual space- but doing so from an evidentiary perspective, which arguably makes all the difference in the world between justice and injustice in that justice has to be guided by truth seeking (which is often the missing part of the justice conversation).

Mack