I’d be curious to see your data, guys. There’s truth to what you are arguing, here, I think. Though, without seeing the data and only judging from study and experience, at this point, I think you have also likely identified correlation that is not necessarily causation.
I am a special education teacher who is a wholehearted supporter of vouchers, charter schools, and every possible conceivable form of school choice. I am squarely in the corner of Milton Friedman and his commitment to a free market in education and giving parents and students the freedom and opportunity to be responsible for their educational choices. And I think this is one of the more serious issues in a field where attempts to explain failure, by students, by teachers, and by schools, is often cloaked in a language of disability with very weak scientific evidence and reasoning to justify a substantial number of diagnoses, especially in the field of learning disabilities.
Having said that, my experience is that financial incentives do not explain a number like 2/3 of diagnoses. What your study seems to demonstrate, from your description here, is that once proactive measures are made to remove an incentive for special education diagnoses, that diagnoses are not made as often without a financial incentive. That makes enormous sense.
It does not, though, I don’t believe, demonstrate causation. What it demonstrates is opportunity that, coupled with other and I would bet more likely causes – namely an often too desperate attempt by well-intentioned folks to both get help for students, to explain away failure on the part of students, teachers, and schools, a tendency to pity children who are struggling academically rather than create more effective opportunities for success, and other reasons for student academic failure that often gets explained as a “learning disability,” generally with very little actual hard scientific evidence to substantiate that diagnoses (certainly not to the standard by which we diagnose, say, cancer or heart disease) – makes special education diagnoses more likely, without teachers and schools explicitly seeking greater bounty, primarily. I do think that plays into the reasoning of teachers and administrators. But I don’t believe that it rises to the level of causation that you seem to be implying or claiming. I think there are other reasons that would offer a better explanation. I would bet that with a more robust data set that evaluates other variables, you would have a better explanation than this good but, I believe, incomplete explanation.
Your solutions, though, are good ones. And more individual choice and responsibility for school and academic choices would go a long way towards offering more real opportunities for student success, I think. It would certainly shift focus from explaining failure to creating success, especially with those for whom such a shift in mindset, attitude, choices, and developed ability matters most – students – which would be a very welcome development. And, given the very low level of scientific rigor typical to special education diagnoses, especially in the area of learning disabilities, I think you would likely experience a drop in those diagnoses and at least a modest rise in student academic success (and likely a much more serious rise, over time, and with more opportunities for choice on the part of students, parents, teachers, administrators, and schools).
Nice reasearch, though. I really appreciate folks working on this question. I think many students, parents and teachers believe that finding a diagnosis of disability will relieve them from the disappointments that academic failure inevitably bring. But I think they will find that reorganizing our efforts around creating the environment for more success – which a commitment to school choice is more likely to do, I believe – will be a much more satisfying and substantial effort, in the long run.
Keep up the good work.
