Tennessee Disability Coalition report suggests more work needed to support students with disabilities

A new white paper from the Tennessee Disability Coalition suggests that K-12 schools throughout the state have a lot of work to do when it comes to supporting students with disabilities.

According to the report, titled “Special Education Behavior Supports, Policies and Practices in Tennessee Schools: Issues and Solutions,” students with disabilities often face punitive measures for behavioral issues rather than evidence-based interventions centered on academic and mental health support. In addition, the report noted, many schools and teachers feel they do not have the appropriate resources to educate and support students with disabilities.

Among key findings, the report noted that 85 percent of Tennessee school districts say that they have a shortage of special education teachers and not enough applicants to fill vacant positions. What’s more, 21 percent of special ed teachers in Tennessee leave their previous school every year.In general, the report said, teacher shortages and high turnover leads to larger class sizes, fewer course offerings and higher rates of inexperienced teachers. It added that teachers who feel inadequately prepared or resourced for working with students with disabilities provide fewer and lower quality supports and interventions for students with disabilities.

“Not only is the state producing fewer trained teachers, Tennessee schools are struggling to retain their existing teaching workforce,” the report noted, citing data from the Tennessee Department of Education. “Eight percent of the state’s teaching workforce left their previous school following the 2021-2022 school year. This equates to 5,365 teachers leaving yearly. Turnover and retention are also highly localized, with some schools reporting zero turnover, and others reporting rates as high as 83.3 percent of teachers leaving.”

Nearly 35 percent of general education teachers said they lacked training in instructional strategies for students with disabilities, according to TDOE data noted in the report. About 62 percent of teachers said they feel that disruptions from students with disabilities was a “major problem.”

The study also noted that over 40 percent of special education teachers stated that they did not have adequate time to provide individualized instruction and intervention, and only 32 percent said they had the necessary tools to assess students with behavior needs and design corresponding intervention. The report said these resource-related issues are compounded by the fact that state-level and school-level policies regarding student misbehavior are still largely “punitive and exclusionary rather than supportive to students with behavior needs.”

In addition, Tennessee schools used formal methods of exclusionary discipline, such as suspension and expulsion, for kids with disabilities at disproportionately higher rates. The report also notes more instances of “excessive and inappropriate use of restraint and seclusion” against students with disabilities.“In recent years, the state has proposed legislation that would have permitted handcuffing kids with disabilities, increased the types of school-based behaviors that must be reported to law enforcement, increased zero tolerance offenses and created a mechanism to permanently remove ‘disruptive’ students,” the report noted.

To better support students with disabilities, the report recommended that districts and state policymakers should develop an academic and behavioral specialist license for special education teachers who work primarily with students with behavior disabilities and require teacher preparatory programs to offer or require a course on behavior data collection practices and evidence-based interventions. The report also recommended creating and requiring professional development for implementing school- and classroom-wide evidence-based intervention and acute behavior de-escalation.

Other recommendations include increasing schools’ ability to hire additional behavioral support staff and licensed specialist practitioners, new incentives to retain special ed instructors, and increasing investments in intervention programming for students with disabilities.

To get a better sense of what’s needed to support students with disabilities, the report also recommended enforcing reporting requirements relating to data about student discipline and reconstituting “a state-level Department of Education Special Education division” that’d be responsible for collecting required data, reporting data and outcomes, enforcing laws and training/supporting school personnel.

“Over four decades of the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) undeniably demonstrates that the system works, and not just for students with disabilities; the entire educational system benefits from its strong implementation. IDEA is not perfect, however, and its benefits do not extend equally to all students. Students with behavior needs continue to lag behind their peers in nearly all markers of student success, and most efforts to address their needs dramatically miss the mark,” the report said of work to be done.