Evidence-based Practices Aren’t the Only Tool in the Shed [JJIE.org]

In late 1975, after passage of the federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, program funding eligibility required, among other things, the ability and resources to diagnose and treat "learning disabilities. It is good to see some progress has been made since then....(Thanks for posting this Samantha!)

I am so glad to see this post. I think it is summarized in the following quote by the author:

With tens of thousands of youth still locked up — the one intervention that is clearly not evidence-based — we should have the courage, vision and ingenuity to provide customized supports and services to youth in the community rather than relying on one type of intervention.

A hammer is very effective, but only if everything is, in fact, a nail.

Though not a perfect parallel with the variables described, a similar version of "lock-up" can be found within/across public school systems where increasingly restrictive environments are pursued for individual students for a number of valid reasons. Unfortunately, no matter how successful a learner is in that more restrictive setting it can be very challenging to make the case that they will successfully re-enter a less restrictive setting.  

Parents/advocates and district service-provides realize this - and it is a genuine conundrum. 

The article resonates with me because despite the best laid plans "of mice and men" I have observed something similar in education. After years of supporting increasingly complex teaming structures to support students to remain within an educational setting that is clearly less restrictive - far too often students reach a point where the team of professionals cease to (re)design the programs around the learner but instead start looking for "programs" in which to "place" the learner.  Such placements always feel temporal or temporary (ie, in the moment, looking at the calendar) yet if you look at the number of students that re-enter or matriculate "back" to less restrictive settings it is historically low.

Features of the service delivery model they are extremely dense (instructional staff, range of service-providers, logistically remote, etc) and fiscally prohibitive. That said, they are often justified because the team concludes that "we've tried everything."  The facets of the more restrictive program often apply a relentless universal design for learning (UDL) approach for that population of demonstrated need that simply don't exist in the less restrictive settings. And herein lies the problem - what might occur if the resources coupled with a UDL approach were to be used instead of promoting a "program" mentality in the first place? A different way to look at it is - "What's going to change in the less restrictive setting to offer that student any hope of transitioning back?"  This is tantamount to requiring the child to change, not the system.  

The end result? We carry a programmatic "hammer" and look for the "nails."