Lesson Planning: Standards Based Inclusive Classrooms

Nancy Leffel Carlson
Lamar University

E. Jane Irons
Lamar University

Betty Duncan
Lamar University

Hollis Lowery-Moore
Lamar University

    Preparation of teachers of special education must change in order to meet requirements of highly qualified teachers under No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB, 2002) of 2001. Under NCLB requirements all teachers must have a bachelor’s degree, a state teaching credential, and meet state requirements for all content areas they are assigned to teach (Samuels, 2005, February; U. S. Department of Education, 2005; Yell, 2006). Content area knowledge in more than one subject area is difficult for any teacher to achieve, but particularly difficult for special education teachers who are frequently assigned multiple content areas and grade levels (Keller, 2006, April).
     A review of state programs found that many states offered special education teacher Pre-K to 12, K to 12, or 1 to 12 certifications, as well as a generic certification in the area of mild disabilities (Geiger, Crutchfield, & Mainzer, 2003). Such broad preparation did not encourage a focus on any content-specific areas, particularly at middle and high school grades where more advanced content, transition, vocational, and career content became important. Few teacher preparation programs prepared special education teachers for secondary assignments (Dever & Knapczyk, 1997; Washburn-Moses, 2005). Washburn-Moses (2005) suggested preservice education favored elementary settings. According to a report by Education Week (April, 2006, p. 15), 29 of 64 fields of teacher preparation were reported to have some teacher shortages; eight of the top ten shortage fields were in special education. Some authors suggested that NCLB requirements for highly qualified teacher status accentuated special education teacher shortages (Honawar, 2006, May; Keller, 2006, April). Clearly, teacher preparation and certification programs in special education required study and possible restructuring to meet current standards.

Background and Literature review

Highly Qualified Teachers and IDEA
The highly qualified teacher requirement significantly impacted special education teacher preparation, particularly at the secondary level. On December 2, 1975, President Ford signed Public Law 94-142, forming the basis for the Individuals with Disabilities Education ACT (IDEA) that created access to public education for students with disabilities. More than 6 million, or 12%, of all students nationally were students with disabilities. In 2000, more than $80 billion was spent on IDEA (Freedman, Bisbicos, Jentz, & Orenstein, 2005, November).
     Congress approved the most current reauthorization of IDEA in November 2004. Attempts were made to align revised IDEA with the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Central to NCLB and IDEA was the requirement that teachers must be highly qualified in every subject taught. Under revised IDEA, special education teachers who provided direct instruction must be highly qualified in all content areas they teach as well as in special education (Samuels, 2005, June).
     Focus on highly qualified in content areas for special education teachers caused states and university programs to examine current certification plans. For example, meeting highly qualified status for high school teachers in Ohio required 45 credit hours of training in each content area. Although other states required fewer hours, multiple content areas and the special education area content compounded the hours required for special education teacher certification (Samuels, 2005, February).
The 2004 IDEA focuses on Teacher Responses to Intervention
Early interventions prior to referral for special education eligibility included teacher training to enable teachers to adapt lesson plans for particular student needs, as well as early reading and other interventions. This was necessary because some children who received inadequate instruction in basic subjects, such as reading, were at-risk for being wrongly identified later as having learning disabilities (Samuels, 2005, October).
     Early federal special education policy focused on trying to get children with special needs into classrooms from which they had long been excluded. In contrast, the 2004 IDEA, under the response to intervention (RTI), aimed to identify specific learning disabilities before students lagged far behind classmates, thereby making formal special education services unnecessary. In RTI teaching models, all students must be provided a variety of interventions, or special lessons, on subjects that were causing difficulty. If a child failed to respond to an intervention, different interventions must be tried before the school and parents decided that special education became necessary. Supporters of RTI suggested that providing interventions took a lot of teacher expertise and effort, therefore this requirement had implications for teacher preparation and professional development for special education teachers (Samuels, November, 2005).
Teacher Preparation and Professional Development
Under NCLB, teachers have been recognized as playing a critical role in student learning. Teacher education was under intense scrutiny as legislation demanded schools hire only highly qualified teachers. Research documented that a well-trained teacher had the greatest impact on at-risk students’ achievement, more so than socioeconomic status, race, class size, and classroom grouping (Archer, 1998; Sanders, 1998; Sanders & Horn, 1998). As part of an appropriations bill, Congress recently commissioned the National Research Council to begin a 2½ year study to synthesize research on teacher preparation programs and advised policy makers on how to improve the process (Viadero, 2005, December).
     Guskey (2003) analyzed 13 lists of characteristics of effective professional development for teachers. Helping teachers to understand content more deeply and ways students learn that content appeared to be a vital dimension of effective teacher preparation. A review of teacher education programs revealed little empirical evidence to show that many of the most common teaching practices in the field produced effective teachers (Viadero, 2005 June).
     Although most teachers embraced the premise that all children could learn, too many were unprepared to teach in high-need schools or work with poor students from diverse backgrounds or students with disabilities. Some schools have adopted scripted, teacher-proof curricula to offset the impact of unprepared teachers. NCLB legislation required districts to use research based supplementary materials that reinforced such decisions. Foster (2004) suggested that using scripted curricula may create a ceiling above which neither students nor teachers could rise because of this static situation.
National Panel Recommendations
A study by the panel of the National Academy of Education proposed development of a common core of knowledge for professional teacher preparation to ensure that novice teachers had what they needed for success in today’s classrooms. Some key components for inclusion encompassed knowledge of subject matter and knowledge of learners to enable teachers to adapt lessons to meet students’ needs; lengthy clinical practice of at least 30 weeks; a National Teacher Test to improve quality of certification programs; knowledge of special education and English language learner characteristics and needs; being able to access what students know; and being able to modify lesson plans (Keller, 2005, May, p. 16).
Teacher Concerns
Teacher attrition was a long standing problem in the field of special education (Boe, Cook, Bobbit & Terbanian, 1998). Factors cited by special education teachers who left the field included role conflict, inadequate preparation, adversarial climates, and paperwork requirements (Freedman, et al., 2005; Gersten, Keating, Yovanoff, & Harniss, 2001). Honawar (2006, May) suggested that one of the biggest concerns for new special education teachers was classroom behavior management issues.
Standards and Teacher Preparation
Teacher preparation programs were reviewed and improved based on a number of considerations, including meeting stakeholder needs and implementing standards-based training and development. Organizations continued on going program reviews for several reasons: to keep programs current based on stakeholder needs, to promote and reinvigorate programs that have become “comfortable,” to improve outreach efforts, and to attract potential candidates. Pathologies of programs in decline were described by Kanter (2004) and included decreased communication, criticism, isolation, decreases in initiatives, and diminishing aspirations. To avoid program decline and to promote growth in programs, the opposite characteristics should be emphasized.
     Key stakeholders must collaborate to deliver fully qualified teaching professionals (Clemet, 2006). Recognized outstanding educator preparation programs included strengthening relationships between educator preparation programs and various stakeholders (Bergeron, 2002; U. S. Department of Education, 1998; 2004; 2005). Strong, viable relationships between stakeholders allowed for awareness of local initiatives and community needs. Furthermore, “as participants from all levels of [the teacher preparation] profession and community come to the table to re-vision teacher preparation, there must be regular and sustained dialogue regarding the standards that guide these endeavors” (Bergeron, p. 106).
     Standards-based reform continued driving change in public education and teacher education programs. Performance-based standards and associated assessments were prevalent at all levels of education. So that the next generation of teachers is fully prepared to teach high academic content standards to all students, aligning teacher preparation with rigorous standards was recommended by the Education Policy Reform Research Institute (2003, p. 23). Teacher educator programs focused on preparing graduates to meet state required standards for children in schools, in Texas known as TEKS: Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for each grade level and content area (TEA, 2001). Teacher preparation programs were designed to meet program standards requirements, such as National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE, 2006) for general and special educators and Council for Exceptional Children (CEC, 2003).
     In addition to the emphasis on requirements for content area knowledge as noted in NCLB, pedagogical knowledge was important for all teacher preparation programs (Berliner, 2000). Grant and Kline (2002) suggested that teacher preparation, along with standards-based reform, provided for “understanding of the interplay between content area and pedagogical practices, as well as philosophical underpinnings of the vision” of education preparation programs (p. 78).
     Both IDEA and NCLB required all students, including those receiving special education services, to participate in state assessment systems (Education Policy Reform Research Institute, 2003, July). Testimony before the House Education and Workforce Committee in July 2006 emphasized the complexity of developing assessments and alternative assessments for students with disabilities. Standards-based lesson planning emphasized the need for staff development and training “so that teachers know how to intervene when students aren’t learning as they should; in other words, change the teaching, not the testing” (Samuels, 2006, July, p. 30). Standards-based lesson planning has implications for teacher preparation programs.
     According to the U. S. Department of Education (USDOE, 2005, p, 32), over 315,000 teachers received initial teacher certification in 2004. In 2002-03, Texas teacher training programs delivered 24,726 initial certificates to teachers (p. 34). Texas was the third highest in the United States in producing teachers who received initial certification, behind New York (32,128) and California (27,136) (p 33). Five states, including Texas, produced approximately 38% of the nation’s teachers. Other states must rely on hiring teachers trained out of state; for example 60% of initial teaching certificates granted in Wyoming and Nevada were for graduates from teacher education programs out of state (p. 35). Statistics for new teachers receiving special education initial certification were disaggregated in this reported data.
     Other states imported new teachers because they had fewer teacher training institutions and had fast-growing school districts. In twelve states, over 40% of teachers who were awarded initial certification were imported from another state. The implication of this was that Texas educational institutions were major exporters of new teachers who received initial teaching certificates in other states. USDOE recommended teacher preparation programs adhere to high standards because of high mobility with teachers relocating to states other than where they received training for initial teaching assignments (p. 35).
     Special education teacher preparation was considered of paramount importance to insure high-quality teachers and for teacher retention. With the requirements of 2004 IDEA, and NCLB, it was critical to solicit the perceptions of community stakeholders about the content needed for inclusion in special education teacher preparation as a first step in program redesign efforts. As Center and Obringer (1986) suggested, differences between what teacher education faculty, and what practicing teachers see as important, required careful consideration in revising and planning over curriculum needs (p. 53).

Purpose Statement

     The purpose of this project was to redesign an EC-12 Special Education Teacher Certification Program that met state and national professional organization standards for teacher preparation to enhance standards-based lesson planning for inclusive classrooms.

Methodology

     The methodology for this project included the following: 1) survey community stakeholders for their input concerning content needs for special education teachers; 2) analyze survey results; and 3) hold focus group meetings to redesign programs. The following topics provided the framework for the methodology section: needs survey, sample and data collection, data analysis, findings, and focus group findings.
Needs Survey
The content of the needs survey included basic curricula from current university preparation programs for special education teachers. Participants were asked to rate content areas such as learning theory or ethics as (1) least important or (5) most important.
Sample and Data Collection
The local education service center partnered with the university and assisted with dissemination of the survey to the 32 school districts including all of the 150 schools. Two hundred twenty-three responses were received. The majority of the responses came from middle school with 110 responses (49%). Fifty-four (24%) were from elementary campuses, and 34 responses (15%) were from high schools. About 11% were from other campuses such as alternative, private schools, or special schools.
Respondent Characteristics
     Over 41% of the respondents were general education teachers, while 32% were special education teachers. Administrators comprised 27% of respondents. The majority, 86% of respondents, were female and 14% were male. The majority, 84% of respondents, were Caucasian. Ethnic categories were combined into a non-Caucasian group because of the low numbers of Asian and Hispanic respondents.
     About one-fourth of respondents reported serving between six and 10 at-risk students per class. This represented all at-risk categories of students and was representative of general education classes. Thirty-six percent reported serving between 16 and 25 students, representing special education settings.
Data Analysis
A factor analysis was used to identify patterns of intercorrelations among items in order to identify common factors or strands (Kachigan, 1986) and to enable “inferences concerning the psychological nature of the construct” (Isaac & Michael, 1997, p. 164). Five factors emerged based upon the total amount of variance accounted for. In addition, correlation analysis was used to determine total reliability of the instrument as well as the reliability for each of the five strands. Table 1 depicts each identified strand with associated reliability and total instrument reliability.
     Total instrument reliability was above .90. Strands for special education applications, content, assessments, and legal issues exceeded .85. The child development/classroom management strand showed moderately low reliability with .65, while the communication and community strand was slightly higher with a reliability of .74.
Findings
Survey findings were reported where responses clustered around common themes, called strands. Strands rated most important by respondents were child development and classroom management, while least important ratings were communication and community. Forty-four districts responded to open-ended questions. Content areas needed most by special education preservice teachers included experiences at a variety of age groups and campuses along with special education settings before student teaching (34%). Twenty-seven percent of respondents stated that university faculty needed more collaboration with site-based personnel, particularly with principals and supervising teachers. In addition, 23% stated that special education preservice teachers needed more hands-on experiences in inclusion classrooms and settings. Recommendations made for program improvement included more training for general education teachers in special education areas (23%). Additionally, student teaching needed to be at least one full semester (16%).

EC-12 Special Education Program Redevelopment

     A four member program development committee was appointed by the Dean of the College of Education and Human Development. The charge for this committee was to review feedback from the survey, study EC-12 Special Education program standards, develop a matrix incorporating national and state standards, identify gaps, and design new courses needed. The program committee met on several occasions to complete this charge. Table 2 provides an example of state and national standards.
     Table 2 provided a comprehensive graphic that included corresponding standards from CEC, State Content Standards, and TExES domains from the state certification examination. Further review of the standards and course content resulted in the development of another matrix, Table 3, to show two of the specific courses where the standards were assigned and assessed.
     Table 3 depicts general requirements for only two of the courses in the revised EC-12 special education program: a brief course description of courses developed with input from the survey, corresponding standards, prerequisites, and co-requisites for each course. Assessments for NCATE requirements are being refined.

Conclusion and Implications

     The voices of public school teachers, administrators, and university faculty provided valuable input and established long-term community relationships. Stakeholders and various community members recommended program changes, including additions to curriculum and course content for the special education teacher preparation program. Stakeholder recommendations included more training in standards-based lesson planning for inclusive classrooms. More training was recommended in specific content areas and more collaboration. A major area of emphasis appeared to be hands-on experience in inclusion classrooms, a broader variety of campuses, classroom settings, and longer student teaching experiences. These program changes reflected the changing role of the special educator and necessary lesson planning expectations in today’s classroom.
     Partnering with the education service center (ESC) was critical to the success. The ESC special education representative served as a member of the University task force for program revision, ensuring continued community input and support. Change was difficult and faculty were somewhat resistant to change. Each course was rewritten for presentation to the Pedagogy Department chair prior to review by the College Curriculum Committee. Each course change required development of a syllabus and change paperwork.
     The process of inviting community input for redesign of EC-12 Special Education Certification Program through the use of survey instruments, and review of program facets will be applied to redesign of additional university programs as opportunities arise. The ultimate goal was to deliver high quality and highly qualified teacher education program graduates who were skilled in delivering quality lesson planning for students requiring specialized instructional practices. This process for program redesign may have implications for use as a model by other programs for high quality and highly qualified teachers who use standards based lesson planning for inclusive classrooms.

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Table 1
Survey Instrument and Strands with Reliability

Table 2
Corresponding state and national standards (Example Standard 1 only)

Note. 1Beginning special educators demonstrate their mastery of this standard through the mastery of the CEC Common Core Knowledge and Skills and appropriate CEC Specialty Area(s) Knowledge and Skills for which the program is preparing candidates.
Source:    1 Council for Exceptional Children (CEC, 2003).
               2 Texas State Board for Educator Certification (TSBEC, 2001).
               3 Texas State Board for Educator Certification (2005).

Table 3
Core Courses EC- 12 Special Education Certification

Note.    18 hours core course content; 6 hours field based experience; 24 total hours
Source:       1 Council for Exceptional Children (2006)
                  2 State Board of Educator Certification (2001)
                  3 State Board of Educator Certification (2005)