Edtech Insiders

How Can Edtech improve Special Education? (Panel Discussion with Amplio Learning)

December 12, 2022 Alex Sarlin Season 4 Episode 7
Edtech Insiders
How Can Edtech improve Special Education? (Panel Discussion with Amplio Learning)
Show Notes Transcript

Dr. Yair Shapira is the founder and CEO of Amplio. Following two decades as an executive in successful start ups, he founded Amplio to help the millions of children with special needs maximize their potential, starting with his son, who stutters. His previous roles include executive positions in sales, marketing, business development and R&D. Dr. Shapira holds a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering and speech processing from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.

Luann L. Purcell, Ed.D. was the Executive Director of the international Council of Administrators of Special Education, Inc (CASE), a division of the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) for 18 years. Dr. Purcell has 48 years of educational experience, as a general education teacher at both high school and middle school level, teacher of students with emotional and behavioral disorders, and assistant superintendent for pupil services for 18 years in a school district with 27,000 students.

Judy Rich, EdD, CCC-SLP, is currently a speech-language pathologist (SLP) as well as an education consultant and lecturer at The University of Texas. She worked in public schools for 35 years as a campus SLP, program specialist for speech and language services, special education director, executive director, and assistant superintendent for student services.

Angelica Morgan was most recently a Senior Curriculum Engineer at 2U and a research intern at CAST, the Center for Applied Special Technology working on the Center on Inclusive Technology in Education Systems (CITES) project. She will received her Ph.D in learning design and technology from North Carolina State University in December with a research focus on the use of technology for special education students.


Alexander Sarlin:

Welcome to Season Two of edtech insiders, where we talk to the most interesting thought leaders, founders, entrepreneurs, educators, and investors, driving the future of education technology. I'm your host, Alex Sarlin, an edtech veteran with over 10 years of experience at top tech companies. In this episode, we'll talk about how edtech can be used for special education populations. We have an all star panel with us today, including the CEO of amplio, a platform super special education to consultants with over 30 years of educational experience in the classroom and as special education administrators, and a researcher at the Center for Applied Special Technology, just finishing her PhD in Special Education and Technology. Dr. Yair Shapira is the founder and CEO of amplio. Following two decades as an executive and successful startups, he founded amplio to help the millions of children with special needs, maximize their potential, starting with his son who stutters. His previous roles include executive positions in sales, marketing, business development, and r&d. And Dr. Shapira holds a PhD in Biomedical Engineering and speech processing. From the Technion Israel Institute of Technology Luann L. Purcell, it was the executive director of the International Council of administrators of Special Education case, which is a division of the Council for Exceptional Children for 18 years, from 2002 through 2020. She keynoted and led sessions in over 48 states and four countries on educational issues and the development of proactive leadership skills. Dr. Purcell has 48 years of educational experience as a general education teacher, a teacher of students with emotional and behavioral disorders, and an assistant superintendent for 18 years in a school district with 27,000 students. Luann is the president of Luann Purcell LLC, where she consults and as a strategic analyst for educational and associational organizations. Judy Rich is currently a speech language pathologist as well as an education consultant and lecturer at the University of Texas. She worked in public schools for 35 years as a campus SLP Program Specialist for speech and language services special education director and executive director and assistant superintendent for student services. In this role, she provided school district leadership for state and federal programs in bilingual and ESL education, special ed and gifted and talented education as well as Title One programs adult education at risk students, and more. Angelica Morgan was most recently a senior curriculum engineer at two u and a research intern at CAST, the Center for Applied Special Technology working on the center on inclusive technology and education systems project. She will receive her PhD in learning design and technology from North Carolina State University this year with a research focus on the use of technology for special education students. When Judy Angel and Dr. Year Welcome to Ed Tech insiders.

Angelica Morgan:

Great to be here.

Luann Purcell:

It's really nice to be here.

Judy Rich:

Thanks, Alex.

Yair Shapira:

Thank you very much, Alex.

Alexander Sarlin:

This is a fantastic group. I'm really excited about this conversation, illustrious group with many years of experience in special education and technology. I wanted to go around and just ask each of you in a couple of sentences. What first got you interested in the special education field? We'll start with Luann Purcell? Well, it's

Luann Purcell:

not a real noble answer. Back in the Dark Ages, when dirt was formed, and I was teaching my second year, my principal was informed that he was going to have a new class in his school next year for students with behavior disorders. And did he have a teacher that might could handle that, that was willing to go back to school and I was the teacher who had the fewest referrals to the office. Me. I did it because I'm wanting to go back to school and get my master's. But I have never regretted it. I don't

Alexander Sarlin:

think that's probably the most unusual story. How about you, Judy?

Judy Rich:

Well, great question, Alex. I'm a speech language pathologist and I love words, and I love to read. So when you put those two things together, if children struggle with words, or struggle, learning to read or taking on literacy, school is a miserable place to be and so putting those two things together for school aged children defines my why. Lovely

Alexander Sarlin:

Angel. How about you?

Angelica Morgan:

Advocating for my kids support needs spawned my interest in special education. My son has autism and an intellectual disability. He has an IEP and learns in a self contained classroom. And then my youngest is twice exceptional with a 504 Our plan so really the family engagement with the teachers?

Alexander Sarlin:

Absolutely. So personal experience. And Yair. How about you?

Yair Shapira:

Yeah, well, for me, the impetus was my son nev, who stutters, and my frustration with the status quo the way he was treated. And they thought that I can harness my experience in technologies specifically in speech processing, as well as intrapreneurship. Dual payment, many others.

Alexander Sarlin:

Wonderful. Actually, yeah, I'd love to double click on that a little bit, just dig down because we spoke at the ASU GSV conference earlier this year. And you gave us sort of a slightly extended version of how you started and play out. It was such a beautiful story. It's such an interesting story. I'd love you to walk our listeners through it for anybody who didn't hear that conversation. And I think it's a great kickoff for this conversation.

Yair Shapira:

Yeah, well, so my son nev, who is now 25, stuttered since his foot first world before the age of two. And just like good parents, we sent him to every speech pathologist we could find in our home country, Israel than in Europe in the US. It actually he improved, but he lapse time and time again to stuttering. And every time it created this way of a deeper hole. So not only does he starter, but he is also a failure in his own mind. Because he could not hold his fluency, it was very frustrating for him, as well as for us. And then one day when he was like, probably 15, was a Friday evening, we sat at my mother's table for dinner. And you know, starving comes and goes, you had a severe day, we could have the other sentence that somebody just walked away from the dinner table, which he doesn't normally do. And my mom looked at my wife and myself and said something like you both have PhDs in Biomedical Engineering, can't you fix his throat, as if this is where the problem is. And it took another half a second to give birth to amplio, it was very clear that, yeah, we should do something about it. It didn't take long to learn that nev is unique in so many ways, but not unique in His struggle, and with his needs, and the foresight to experts, people like like Judy, and like Luann, and others, who know what works, and what does not, and who also share the same passion to help those kids to change the course of life. And people will energize this Iam with changing the status quo.

Alexander Sarlin:

It's really beautiful. And it's I mean, it's such an amazing pivot to be able to do you had so much expertise to where you know, publishing research in, in your field and said, I'm going to turn my attention to in turn my expertise to helping students like my son. And now amplio, of course, helps hugely wide range of special education students all over the world. And so before, we will definitely talk about amplio and some of the technical, you know, technology based solutions. But let's start and to sort of zoom out and talk about the prevalence of special education, especially in the US, we could talk globally. But let's start with us. Just a couple of quick factoids just to kick us off. But I You are all know more about this than I do. About 7.2 million students in the US get special education services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and that's about 15% of all public school students. So about one in six, six to seven, that varies widely by state from about, you know, 11% to 20%, in a very, depending on the state. And then when you break that down, it gets a little technical you have, you know, 19% of those students have a speech or language impairment 12% are diagnosed on the autism spectrum. And then a third have, you know, learning disability, and 15% have another health impairment, which can be any kind of disability that affects their schooling. That's really the highest level. But Lewin I'd love to ask you, you have so many years of experience in this space to unpack some of those numbers. What does it all mean that 15% of all public school students receive special education? And how would you break down these different impairments?

Luann Purcell:

Well, you know, when you add all those up, then you've got almost almost 80% of that 7.2 million, but the other eight came up. 21% are folks who have our students who have physical disabilities, your vision impaired, your hearing impaired, your deaf blind, your what we would think of a child who is a quadriplegic or any of those, you also have your behavior disorders, the students that I started out teaching, and there's just a plethora of particular disabilities. But what we really realize is that 50 years ago before 94 142, which was then made into Ida, but their original law, if you asked anybody what was special education, they wouldn't have known anything about it. We might have used the word handicap, which we don't typically use anymore. But but when they heard that word, what they thought about were folks who were in wheelchairs, they thought about people who were blind, or people who were deaf, maybe mildly intellectually disabled, or maybe even moderately disabled, intellectually disabled, but the rest of the population was invisible. Because they weren't in schools. They weren't really even in the community. And so with the law passing, and a mandate, somebody says, well, it's something we should have just done. Well, you know, that's why we have federal laws, because we don't always do what we're supposed to do. And so somebody has to make us do it. And so that's where, you know, we came up with having all these different areas, the term autism, you wouldn't have heard that 30 years ago, even. And so our knowledge has grown. And we have realized that we need to really provide services in a way that truly meets the individual needs of all students. You know, I've heard people say, Well, we ought to have an IEP for everybody. And that's, I've heard teachers go, no, no, I don't want that. But we do, we do need to meet the needs of all students. But one of the things that I think that we've learned over the years is that we can provide those services in a much more normal environment. And our students learn so much better. And so we've learned a lot through inclusion. And I think that that's really the next step.

Alexander Sarlin:

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And let's dig in and talk a little bit about inclusion. You know, in 2020, a majority of special education students, about two thirds of them spent 80% or more of their time in regular education classes. And that actually is very different than the status quo. That is not what was happening in the past. That number is more than doubled in recent decades, so it used to be a third or less. And now it's two thirds. Angel, you've researched inclusive classrooms in your studies, and you've experienced it firsthand. What are some of the reasons behind the rise in inclusive classrooms over the past decades?

Angelica Morgan:

I think the main reasons behind the rise in Inclusive Classrooms are new laws and advances in teaching practices. For example, in the US, legislation has increasingly supported education of students with disabilities in the least restrictive environment, really since 1990, when IDEA was enacted and and then internationally shortly after there in 1994. The So Monica declaration really kind of decreed internationally that special education needs, the students must really have access to regular classrooms and regular schools, and support child centered pedagogy. So also about that time, the Center for Applied Special Technology or caste, develop the Universal Design for Learning Framework, which advocates for flexible learning approaches and content delivery that enables students to customize the content to meet their own unique learning needs. So as more educators learned about UDL, educator mindset sort of shifted to view that curriculum and learning environment should be designed to accommodate differences in the way that the students learn. UDL has since become a regular part of legislation in the United States in the Higher Education Opportunity Act through different versions of the national tech plan, as well as in every student succeeds. So going forward, grieving, evolving even more. And the next version of the UDL framework, which is in progress really is starting to address equity issues as well. And the newest update is being actually led by Nicole Tucker Smith, who was featured on our tech insiders at the end of August.

Alexander Sarlin:

Yeah, she was a fantastic guest. Judy, I'd love to bring your voice in here. You know, we were talking about inclusion and all of these laws and sort of policy changes. What does it really mean for classrooms that special education is almost now seen as a as a differentiation issue. It's like if you're in a classroom, and you need to change your teaching practices to personalize them for some students, that also includes for students with IEPs, tell us about that change and what it means?

Judy Rich:

Well, I think that I'll start with what it means. What it means is that we in the larger community, you need to provide the professional learning opportunities that allow for the mind shift that it takes for teachers to just accept as their usual and customary practice that they're going to meet the needs of every learner. So a diagnosis or a label that results in an individual plan for a student doesn't mean that student is any different, that that little human is no different than they were before the diagnosis in terms of meeting their needs, teaching them so I think professional development that includes the for the teachers and the staff and the campus administrators, the social emotional, heart shift and mind shift over to meeting the needs of everyone in the classroom. And then I would love for it to be the case that supports are provided in a meaningful way. And hopefully technology adds to this. But supports are provided to that classroom teacher coming out of the pandemic, teachers are hurting. Children have different needs. It's a different game right now than it was pre pandemic. So there's a lot there. But just to start with, Let's equip teachers to meet those individual needs. I don't think any teacher wants to feel like they're a bad teacher or not meeting reaching a child, when they feel like they're not reaching a child, that's when they refer and want the child move somewhere else, because they don't want to feel like they're not a good teacher.

Alexander Sarlin:

Yeah, I love that phrase, you know, hardships in mind shifts, and, you know, hearing about the importance of universal design for learning as a curriculum, some of the federal laws and the, the need for professional development. You know, it's one thing to say, let's have inclusive classrooms, it's another to make sure that you can actually have the support and have the professional development for teachers so that they can make it work is a whole different thing. You know, we've talked about doing special needs students are a hugely diverse group, we have these individualized education programs, the IEP s, and we mentioned, you know, technology in passing, but as an edtech podcast, we obviously want to want to go there, you know, the technology that supports special education students has to be really powerful, has to be flexible, and have multiple means of representation, and all of the things that Udo suggests and it has to be accessible for visually impaired or deaf students or others. That can mean that some technology programs focus on certain subpopulations of the entire special education landscape. So you're here, you've been building amplio for years, and it's serving lots of students, tell us about your approach and amplios approach to serving special needs students, and how you build a program to focus on certain populations.

Yair Shapira:

Yeah, I think that this is the core challenge in special education, middle split the wards patient in special education defines exactly the velocity the students. So if you think of the bell curve, and you look at general education, they address the center of the bell curve, right. And in the center students, more or less comparable skills. So General Education Solutions, like curriculum or assessment, take an approach of a one size fits all or a few sizes fit all. That doesn't work in special ed, right? Special Ed is a is a long tail of students skills. And not only is it a long tail of skills, it's also multi dimensional, in the sense that these are very different disorders, and often, comorbidities so multiple disorders, like 30% of dyslexic kids also have an attention deficit. So now it's more than one dimension, right? So how can you even start comparing these students? How can you compare a child with on the autistic spectrum? Who is low functioning with a child who is high functioning, right? How can you measure them on the same scale? How can you develop a curriculum that fits both? That's what happens in the long tail. So the old paradigm that may have been true decades ago is that if this cannot be structured, then the only way to resolve this is do it fully manually. The result of this is that the only solution was to load the entire responsibility for special education on the shoulders of the educators. And when I say the entire responsibility, they need to develop their own content, they need to read their own science. They need to develop their own programs, to work with the parents, with the classroom teachers to work within the general education schedule, to pull out the students to serve them to feel the endless self reporting and eventually they're accountable for the progress. Right. So it's a one person fits all. And we claim that in 2022 things can be different. Because this is exactly where modern technology excels. Modern technology excels in long tails. It excels in personalizing. For each and every individual, you know, think of Facebook, right? Facebook is a newspaper that is personalized for a billionaire from New York and for a 14 year old girl in Nigeria, right? Spotify is a personalized DJ, for every person. And Amplo solves or addresses these longtail using an individualized and personalized learning path for each and every child with the own needs is delivered by the professional and documented using the technology.

Alexander Sarlin:

That's fascinating. Yeah, I think that that concept of the long tail and all this the multi dimensional nature of so much of the lives of special needs students really stands out there and yes, first of all, is learning is a term that's come and gone and been used in all sorts of contexts. But when it comes to special education, it's real. You really need personalized learning you need to be able to do out a system for the needs of every student. So, you know, Ed Tech for special education comes in a wide variety of formats. If you actually, you know, look at some of the companies that support special ed, a number of them are student information systems and data management systems to help educators manage all of the IEPs. They're also communication tools to keep all of the different people who support special education students connected, and accessibility tools that make sure that content can be accessible to as many students as possible. Judy, I'd love to hear your take on some of the areas in which technology can best support students with special needs and educators.

Judy Rich:

Oh, great question. Okay. So I think there's two, at least two facets of this multi dimensional issue that I want to land on. One is the management tools for teachers. Right now, there are software platforms out there, there are apps there are, but everything is disconnected. So a teacher has to deal with multiple platforms, multiple systems. And you know, my daughter is a kindergarten teacher, she has been teaching pre K, now she's this year, first year Kinder teacher. And she said to me over the weekend, that you know, Mom, I don't have any time to teach, because I have to collect data on every child on every little standard in the curriculum. And when am I supposed to teach. And so I'm assuming she's taking data by hand and then loading it into some system to keep track of all of the quantification that we want to do. But just the management pieces, I'm very hopeful that we have unified systems that will pre populate redundant data that will do all of the things that we currently have the capacity to do and the things that we haven't dreamt about yet, in terms of managing the compliance pieces right now. Compliance is the tail wagging the dog timelines, you know, everything. And so I My hope for the future is that through technology, we manage all of that we do natural language processing, some voice recognition for progress monitoring of children's voices, that, you know, the sky's the limit for the management piece. And then if once we get the management piece kind of harnessed, then I think the next piece that is even the bigger most exciting piece is how are we going to interface excellence and talented teaching with technology to allow students more opportunities to practice their skills. This is going to sound a little bit like I'm a professor. But I think that we need to use technology in the future at every phase of the lesson lesson cycle, to engage interest in the lesson, to present the new content to connect the content to previous learning. You can I know yours, envisioning technology every step of the way, but not solely technology. So we have to interface the teacher or the speech language pathologist or the dyslexia teacher with the technology to maximize support. Right now, the big deal is that children, especially with language, learning difficulties, need many more repetitions. If a typical child needs 12 repetitions to understand a new vocabulary word, I bet you that a child with a language learning disorder needs 10 times that. So repetition, guided practice, independent practice, all of those can be managed through technology. So I'm really excited about what's to come for us in edtech.

Alexander Sarlin:

Fascinating answer, I love the split between the management piece and connecting all that technology pre populating data dealing with the compliance. You know, as I mentioned, getting away from that one person fits all solution where a teacher like your daughter is, and I'm sure many of our listeners are totally overwhelmed just trying to put together all the pieces. That's exactly what technology is really good at. And then yes, teaching the tech at every phase Luann I'd love to sort of ask you to follow up. Are there other technical solutions that you've seen or that you hope to see for the population of special needs students and educators?

Luann Purcell:

Well, I think it's so exciting to see technology being used with all students. You know, early on, we saw the tech area was pretty much in our most severely disabled students, our vision in depth and all those we had technology there and that was great. And we needed it because those were our most expensive areas. Because we had low incidence we had fewer students and the need for the teachers were or greater. And so it was really, really needed. But now technology is being applied across the board. And I think that's wonderful. And what I'm excited about is that it extends the duration and intensity of the services from just that teacher. So it's just like, we learned this with our related services, occupational therapy, physical therapy, and speech and language pathology, you use that one on one was great, but that wasn't enough, you couldn't have enough of those therapies to really make a big difference. So so some of the therapy would move into the classroom. And so then the teacher would learn. And As Judy said, we trained the teachers to kind of extend the services of an occupational therapist or that speech and language pathologist. And then we really learned, I think, during the pandemic, that we could extend that to the parent to the home. And so you are multiplying the amount of services that a student receives. And, you know, we need to always remember, the bottom line is the Student Achievement needs to improve. And if we're not all about student achievement, then what are we really about. And so I see technology as being that extender, to be able to provide that extra practice that Judy was talking about. And so we can use technology to extend the services to our students.

Alexander Sarlin:

I love that idea of taking these related services, and not only having them extended into the general ed classroom, but also extended to the home, and being able to have many different stakeholders be contributing to the students well being. And to Julie's point about repetition as well. You know, having the same activities being repeated in various places is obviously going to be really helpful for students. Angela, I want to bring you in, because I know you've done a lot of work on technology for special ed, are there any other roles on all the entrepreneurs listening and thinking about how to use technology for special ed, we've heard about management, connecting tech teaching with tech, more interest, more reps, and you know, extending services, any other use cases you'd love to tell us about?

Angelica Morgan:

Yeah, I really think the important part is technology sort of enables authentic and engaging and collaborative learning experiences. It's not just about funding on a screen. Many learning technologies are being produced inclusively, that enable differently abled students to learn alongside their peers. For example, Lego has Braille bricks that enable students who are blind to play along and collaborate with their sighted peers. And then there's a learning tool called Osmo, that enables learners to use an iPad or a Kindle, to learn actively and collaboratively with their peers. And so that's a tool and those these are tools that are just designed for every child. And I think that Ed Tech is slowly realizing that, you know, making it accessible for one makes it accessible for all. So I'm really excited about the engaging learning tools that are out there that allow for collaborative and authentic learning

Alexander Sarlin:

amazing answers across the board. It's a really inspiring set of use cases, we're actually talking to Osmo. In our next episode, one of the heads of asthma, which was purchased by by Jews a few years ago, and does really, really interesting work. Fascinating, fascinating. And so you know, as it's sort of been mentioned, here, especially it is a is a very complex ecosystem, there are lots of different stakeholders, there are students who have a huge wide variety of needs, families and parents, special education teachers, general education teachers, all the related services that speech language pathologists, occupational therapists, and more. Governments get deeply involved in special education, of course, in terms of funding and policy, school administrators, advocacy groups, it just keeps going. There's also because there's so much, you know, specialized funding for it, it's a space with a lot of business opportunities for ad tech entrepreneurs. It's a billion dollar plus market opportunity. And it's a actually a type of product that yields very high revenue and growth year after year, because special education continues to expand. And I, I hope that's not an awful way to talk about it. But I think there's an opportunity for a real win win here. So you're here as the entrepreneur and you've got into this, the last thing you were thinking was the revenue. But you know, when it comes to special education, technology, how can ed tech entrepreneurs make sure that they're always balancing the needs of all of these different stakeholders around the special ed classroom? And keep an eye on the business opportunity as well? How do we make sure that we're doing what's best for students and not, you know, not spilling over and thinking of special ed tech as a pure business?

Yair Shapira:

Yeah, well, tough question. But for me, it has been crystal clear along the entire way. I mean, there is one truth for all stakeholders, whether these are clinicians or teachers or administrators or superintendents or state commissioners, when they go home for the weekend. What they tell the family and friends is not I got all the fields right in the form, in the compliance to be something like, Lisa, my seven year old girl told me for the first time what you did in a week on a weekend, and she used so many words we've learned together, right? So in the heart and soul, everybody signed up to help kids. Not only that, if you look, you can be cynical about it, but you spoke about funding and funds. If you look at the cost of special education, the of course the direct costs, and many companies provide management tools that can save 5% 10% 15% 20% direct cost. But the real cost of Special Education does not lie in direct costs. The cost of Special Education lies in the fact that many of these kids will grow up to be tax dependent, other than taxpayers, that I think 70% of kids do not read proficiently on fourth grade will end up in prison, on welfare, that the life expectancy for children with learning disabilities is 16 years shorter than the average. The Boston Consulting Group just recently had a 2020 study on the cost of dyslexia for the state of California. Can you guess what the cost of dyslexia for the state of California is $1 trillion. Long term cost, that's the cost, which means that if you can help those kids, you're saving a lot of money. And that's if you only look at the dollar amount. So if you ensure that helping kids is your North Star, you will do well. Well, that's easily said. But it's how the undertaking, because the market pulls you all the time to the bureaucratic aspects of special education. These are always the immediate pains. Kids bogus is not the immediate pain, the immediate pain is feeling paperwork. But kids bogus is the only to know, style. Having that said, right, keep in mind that the educators are operating under a very, very heavy system, especially education is very hard. They are overworked, not to talk about shortages. So if we can offload and empower them, while helping the students, it's definitely a win win. So for us, the way we combine those two is that think of, of amplio as providers of an advanced spaceship, that take kids from point A to a much better point B, where the educators and education leaders are the captains of this spaceship, and they drive the spaceship, and we need to take care of them as well.

Alexander Sarlin:

That's a terrific explanation, I think, you know, the way I sort of interpret that is that, you know, in a very complex and difficult system, for educators, and for everyone, technology can be used to take some of the work like the field filling and the compliance work off of the shoulders of educators make things easier, as well as some of the, you know, the repetition, the direct teaching the direct guidance and instruction that teachers may not, you know, be able to do at the scale that they need to do for every individual student. And by keeping an eye on him basically, on on the outcomes as the core need for every student and really think long term outcomes, you know, can these students get to a comfortable happy, you know, productive life, it becomes a very powerful lever, and that's about special education generally, and the technology that supports it. Does anybody want to add on to that very wide ranging answer is a terrific answer. God, let me call on you. Is there anything you would say? If if there ed tech entrepreneurs listening who are thinking about the special education space, you advise amplio? How might they make sure that they are keeping an eye on the ball, which is, you know, student outcomes and and making life easier for educators?

Judy Rich:

Well, I always like to express my opinions, right? Yeah, yeah. I would say that if I were in edtech, that the first thing I would do would be to study the system and find the duplicated effort in the system. Teachers in every school building, or recreating the wheel every year because they have to plan for their new group of students and meet each student's needs. I think we can use technology to just increase efficiency and effectiveness for students. I don't know how that's what that's going to look like. But I do know that it's going to save money. There's a lot of duplicated cost that's represented in special education budgets across our country. And I bet you in that $1 trillion, dyslexia price tag in California, there is some waste and some inefficiency, because without technology, every teacher has to do it, recreate that wheel over and over again. So that's one of the first things I would say. And that is to study the system, and find the places to help support teachers with efficiency as they deliver their quality instruction. And think out of the box is what I would say. Another thing I would say is that we tend to disproportionately spend our money in special education, we spend a lot of money on staff and on the identification of students with disabilities to get them into special education services, about 70% of the money, federal money goes to identification and initial placement. And we need to invert that. So we're spending 70% of the extra dollars for special education on the education, the intervention, the treatment plans, the measurement of a treatment on important outcomes that have an impact on that child's life. So I just want to reinvent the whole system, when it comes to money, I spent a lot of years doing the money thing and trying to coordinate title one dollars with special ed dollars with local and state dollars. And there's a lot of resistance there. It's a heavy weighted system, in terms of doing things differently. So I would love for Ed Tech to lead some advocacy efforts with our legislators to get things written a little bit more loosely, that allows for discretion and judgment on the part of educators about how to spend these categorical funds in a way that maximize the dollar using a tech to move us forward.

Alexander Sarlin:

Terrific call to action. I love that idea of advocacy and finding redundancies increasing efficiency and switching from the identification to the actual service and learning it's a powerful thoughts. I really like that. So we have about 10 minutes left. And there's two topics that we absolutely have to discuss, given that we're having this conversation at the beginning of the 2022 2023 school year. The first, of course, is the pandemic, we're coming off of two to three years of pandemic education. And I want to do this question sort of as a lightning round, we'll go around to each of us. The question is, how did COVID-19 Change special education? And what did we learn about special education in the last two years? And of course, anything about technology would be really useful as well, how has technology helped or hurt the special ed world? So let me start with you. Luann.

Luann Purcell:

Well, it was a rude awakening, I would say, for education. It unfortunately took us all by surprise. I remember when my eldest son was in medical school, he called home one night and said, Mama, how come I didn't know anything about the Spanish flu? How come I didn't learn that in school? I said, Well, you probably slept through it, because you were taught that it was part of the curriculum. But he said, Well, you know, it's not a matter if it's a matter of when we have a pandemic. But I think that education really rose to the adversary there. And it was something that overnight practically people came up with solutions, taking Wi Fi adapters into school buses and parking them in neighborhoods. You know, we've kind of done that forever. But we didn't even really think about it until we had to figure out a way to get internet connections to our students, because that was the only way we could teach them. I think that technology really just bloomed and blossomed during the pandemic. I think another thing that really came about was we realized we couldn't do it by ourselves, because those kids were sitting in the homes with the parents. And so I think that it really helped us to see that we needed stronger partnerships with the families. I think families learned that teaching is a little harder than they thought it was. I think it really was a way for all of us to have our eyes open. And I hope we never go back to the place where we're not ready at any minute. I remember somebody saying, well, we'll never have snow days anymore. Now we'll just we'll just have an internet day. Of course we do these days. Everybody needs a brain off that. But But I think that it did help us realize that we can use technology to extend our instruction to students and that we can in a meaningful way, with proper preparation, assist families and being a real partner in education. So I think there were some good things that came out of it. No doubt we lost a lot of instruction during that time. And I think that we we learned some lessons in there.

Alexander Sarlin:

Angel, let's pass it to how did COVID-19 Change special ed?

Angelica Morgan:

I think it created learning communities. I really do. I think that it, it made it such that, you know, I was a paraprofessional, as a parent, I work from home and I was learning as the alongside my child, I was doing yoga every day I was helped he's nonverbal. You know, this expectation that students are all the sudden expected to interact with a computer who are not able to independently interact with the computer, in the same way challenge teachers and myself to think of outside of the box, to come up with ways for to enable them to independently participate in learning through this virtual modality that nobody thought would ever really, that expectation would ever be there. So I really think it prompted a lot of mind shift to enable new opportunities to come about and ideas for learning. You're here.

Alexander Sarlin:

How about you from your perspective from amplio? How did COVID-19 Change special ed? And how did technology help?

Yair Shapira:

Yes, it was, you know, I think that the every intrapreneur knows the term Crossing the Chasm, based on the old book from 91. Right? It speaks about the duration it takes to adopt innovation. And I think that COVID was the catalyst for crossing the chasm in, in ad tech, more so in Gen. And then in special ed, but also especially.

Alexander Sarlin:

So went from early adopters, and to the majority to people is suddenly everybody needed to be working in tech, in one way or another. I'm Judy, how about you? How did COVID-19 Change special ed? How does technology help?

Judy Rich:

Well, I asked the same question, Alex, in South Dakota, I was giving a keynote speech last week. And I said one of my discussion prompts was, what did you learn from the pandemic and from the back of the room, immediately, a speech language pathologist yelled out, we can do the impossible. And I think that's one of the personal learning things that we got from the pandemic, never did, we ever dreamed that we were going to turn on a dime, and go from in person to remote over spring break. So just the personal learning and the personal growth and the personal connectivity, that angel mentioned in terms of community, and building trust with parents and extending all of the things that have already been said. But I think that the learning is a is a personal journey, coming out of the pandemic that I hope changes us for the better, makes us stronger, and also makes us much more open to the use of technology in special education for a variety of things.

Alexander Sarlin:

That acceptance of technology, I think was across the board in all of education. And I think in special ed, people really didn't know if it was going to work. And it started to I think in some ways it did in some ways it didn't. But I think we're never going to go back to a time when we think it's not possible. The other issue that is so important right now is this teacher shortage where you 20 to 23 school year. And that's exacerbated a chronic staffing problem in special education, you know, Luna and you started this conversation by being recruited into special ed, because there wasn't, there weren't people to do it. And that's that's a very common story, you know, educators for special education have been in short supply for half a century, there's a great article 74 million, it's a California publication, basically, you know, that nationwide lack of special ed teachers has been clear for decades, and between 1998 and 2018. That's pre pandemic 80% of states reported Special Education shortages. So in the special ed world, teacher shortages is old news, and it's only gotten worse. The question for all of us is, and there's going to be our final question, how does the current educators shortage affect special ed students? What are some solutions? And how can technology help get enough professional trained educators into the space with special ed students? So Luann let me start with you again. How does the current educator shortage affect special ed? And how might technology help?

Luann Purcell:

Well, with a shortage, then what we're saying is we don't have enough teachers, therapists speech and language pathologist, psychologists, whatever who are trained at the appropriate level to meet the needs of the students. Now, actually, I've read a few things that said, we've got enough people out there, they're just choosing not to work. You know, they've moved into different fields, but I would still say I think there's a shortage but that What is why are they leaving the field, they're leaving the field because they feel overwhelmed. And so I think technology can really work in several ways. One, if we can come up with a way that they don't feel so overwhelmed, As Judy said several times the efficiency effectiveness of what they are doing, if technology can help with that, than that certainly is a way that we can encourage our teachers. I know I sound like a broken record, but I believe in partnership between the family and the school and the community. My community is how sin county is our school system. We have Robins Air Force Base is the largest civilian employer in the state of Georgia, almost everybody is connected to the base. And one of the things that the school system does is it works with the base to come up with what kind of jobs do they need on the base, and then the school system works with our Technical College, to make sure that we're training people there. If we all get together and through technology, were able to amplify what we're able to do for our students, then we're going to see improved outcomes for our students. And that's the bottom line. But I think we need to think further in technology, the use of AI, you know, artificial intelligence, the use of apps being able to tie everything together. So not just the management system is helping the teachers, but that the instructional systems tie together so that teachers aren't having to gather data that goes from one to the other. And so if everything can be tied together through technology, then again, I think that that's going to extend the services of the teacher is going to keep them from feeling overwhelmed. And it's going to help them to totally be able to do what they need to do. And so technology is really an answer to that. Yeah, here. How

Alexander Sarlin:

about you? How can the technologies to help the educator shortage for special ed?

Yair Shapira:

Yes, shortage used to be a human resource and HR challenge, right? Not anymore, right, though just no more special educators to hire. So the question is, how can we do? What can we do with them with the current staff in order to adequately serve the kids in need, and do this, while retaining and empowering the stuff that we already have, because if they leave, we just get into a hole. So instead of loading them, and we can help them, you know, the technology has been a power multiplier in many different industries. And in the most professional ones, like medicine or architecture, technology and power the professionals have did not replace them, like others sometimes perceive. And it actually empower them to do what they signed up for. And in special education, they signed up to help kids and logical help them with that.

Alexander Sarlin:

Judy, how about you? How can Special Education educator shortage be supported through technology or other means?

Judy Rich:

Well, it's a big bad problem right now, the great resignation coming out of the pandemic has affected all of education in our country. And one of the interesting things to observe is how our leaders at campuses respond to that, trying to grab the speech pathologist to be a substitute in kindergarten, because there's no kindergarten substitutes available, and just the whole stress of class coverage is looms large, and it, it also replaces that urgency replaces quality instruction. So I think that we can use ad tech to ensure quality, a quality platform and allow students to stretch and grow, even if there are different teachers in front of them every day because of substitutes. So I think that technology can help with quality instruction and a platform for learning in the face of this shortage. I also think that we need to be very careful to match evidence based practice and our intended impact of special education services, through technology to what we really believe in. And we've all talked about quality. And at the end of the day, it's about learning and growth and being able to contribute to our society. That's the purpose of public education in our country, for all of our learners. And so I just think that the blend between ed tech and the problems that we're facing right now coming out of the pandemic, are a fertile ground for doing exciting things. And I just look forward to how we're going to solve the problems because we can do it we can do the impossible we can solve these problems and we will Oh, yeah,

Alexander Sarlin:

that's a great message. And finally, Angel, I'd love to get your, your voice just to wrap us up. How can technology or other means help support the educators shortage, especially for special education?

Angelica Morgan:

I think it really goes back to supporting teachers and encouraging teachers, really, technology is becoming a more vital role in teacher preparation programs. And if more teacher preparation programs start offering online ability and classes and such and flexibility, that becomes a more accessible, you know, career for people to enter into, as well as online learning and professional development communities that help teachers support each other, that's going to really enable a lot of classrooms to become more inclusive, because regular teachers are going to have that knowledge there and be able to support special needs students in their classrooms, and not having to maintain independent classrooms for everything is going to really I think help in that we can leverage peers to help learn and inclusive classrooms rather than simply splitting everything out and making the higher need for making it the teacher making helping students learn from each other.

Alexander Sarlin:

Fantastic. So we're at time, we will get resources asynchronously and put them in the show notes because we know that there are people who will want to dig a lot deeper into this great conversation. Really important conversation. Yeah, your Lewin, Judy and Angel, fascinating conversation. We've covered so much ground. And I think you know, some of the three lines, we can do the impossible community matters, efficiency, reduce, remove redundancy, you know, make sure that you you build systems that talk to each other and create empower educators. I think we all have a lot of work to do, but we can do it. And it's really been a fascinating conversation. Thank you all for being here with me on at Tech insiders. Thanks for listening to this episode of Ed Tech insiders. If you liked the podcast, remember to rate it and share it with others in the tech community. For those who want even more Ed Tech Insider, subscribe to the free ed tech insiders newsletter on substack.