Delivering Educational Services That Meet the Needs of All Students (Commentary) (Report‪)‬

The authors of the preceding articles discuss a number of issues that continue to shape the discourse about policies and practices affecting the education of students with disabilities. In what follows, we comment upon a number of timely, historically important, and vexing issues that pervade discussions about the delivery of educational services for all students. We offer no final resolution to these issues because systems of educational services, like all human artifacts, ultimately conform to the aspirations and intentions of communities who design and use them. We hope, however, that our comments will encourage thoughtful and critical discussion about changing conceptions of special education. The contributions in this special issue highlight the fact that history and culture have always shaped views about special education and the practices that impact the education of students with disabilities. McLaughlin reviews historical interpretations of educational equity and how they reflect different perspectives about the relative importance of group and individual equity. Artiles, Kozleski, Trent, Osher, and Ortiz warn that federal policies, however well intended, can have potentially insidious effects when they fail to take into consideration historical and cultural presuppositions about underserved students. Fuchs, Fuchs, and Stecker discuss how different political constituencies' purposes are grounded in federal legislation that impact conceptions of special education and how to deliver educational services for all students. Dorn cautions that organizational, political, and cultural tensions impact the development and implementation of institutionalized systems of data-based decision making. Bruder reviews the history of legislation governing early childhood intervention policies, and the systemic barriers to the implementation of evidence-based developmental services in practice. Finally, Brownell, Sindelar, Kiely, and Danielson show how the preparation of special educators reflects shifting political perspectives and historical assumptions about teacher quality. In short, systemic responses to the delivery of special education services are inevitably situated in their historical and cultural context (Osgood, 2005). People's most closely held values, which influence the educational choices they make, are a residue of their cultural history.