Disabilities in the News and at Home

Colin Farrell, Reading Programs, Writing Progress, and More

Hi Friends! Today, I have a few smaller items for you, rather a book excerpt or full essay.

Book Status

With Ian away at college for only two more days, I’ve been writing up a storm this week. I finished off Chapter 6, which discusses various options for autistic young adults, ages 18-21, who aren’t ready for college. 5,249 words! Boom!

Now, I’m working on Chapter 7, which discusses the best way to fit a neurodiverse kid into the traditional college ecosystem. It’s super rough right now, with a lot of cutting and pasting from other material. It’s 6,122 words, but those words need lots of love. I’ll be busy today.

I hope to be done with Chapter 7, and mostly done with Chapter 8, by the time we go to Spain next week. But real life is intruding. We’ll be gone all day on Saturday picking up Ian from college. On Sunday, we have to celebrate my parents’ 60th anniversary. All good stuff, but I need a solid rough draft with 11 chapters by the end of the month.

I need a writer’s cabin in the woods.

I’m in a huge rush to finish this book, because things are going to get even more crazy in September. Ian’s life needs oversight - driving him around and making sure that he’s on track at the community college. I’m starting a new gig (more on that soon), while maintaining my consulting business. It’s all great stuff, like I said, but not the ideal conditions for producing written content.

Reading Matters

The best way to improve outcomes for special ed students is to improve reading instruction for all kids. Good reading instruction helps spec ed students more than a bigger budget. Mississippi —can you believe it? — is hitting it out the ballpark.

Beth Hawkins has a great article in The 74, which discusses new research on special education funding. Researchers say that special education funding is largely ignored by policy makers and that there are huge differences in spending and staffing across the states.

But funding seems to have no impact on outcomes. You know what matters? High quality reading instruction. Some states are dragging their feet about making the change to the Science of Reading (ahem… states with strong teachers unions…), and others made changes last year.

Mississippi, which has always been the bottom of the barrel for education quality, made the switch quickly and has seen huge results. (My strong union state of New Jersey is still using discredited curriculum.) Without putting another cent into special education, children with disabilities saw a huge increase in reading scores because of their overall improvement of the reading curriculum.

Fix reading, and you end up fixing special education, too.

Mississippi is one of two states that dedicated the smallest portion of its education budget — some 8% — to meeting the needs of special education students, yet it is one of four where children with disabilities perform the highest on the reading portion of the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

More on this from Chad Aldeman.

Pay attention to the *outcomes* of students with disabilities

Celebrity Power

Celebrities politics are one of my side interests. I’m fascinated by how the media covers them and how they can shape public policies. If I was still in academia, I would be doing research on this.

This week, the autism and disability Facebook pages were dominated with links to People Magazine’s cover story about Colin Farrell and his son with Angelman Syndrome. Friends sent me links to the articles. The YouTube video has over 3 million views.

Farrell gives an honest account of what it’s like to have a kid with a disability. The love for his son shines through.

One quote is really relevant to my work in helping with autism transition issues:

“Once your child turns 21, they’re kind of on their own. ... All the safeguards that are put in place, special ed classes, that all goes away, so you’re left with a young adult who should be an integrated part of our modern society and more often than not is left behind.”

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ICYMI

Last week, I accidentally only sent my newsletter to only three people, and not the whole group. So here it is….