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4
Effective Instruction for Mildly
Mentally Retarclec! Children
In Chapter 1 we argued that the quality of instruction in special education
programs is one of three key factors that determine whether disproportion
should be considered problematic. Chapter 3 presented our view that the
justification for assessment procedures derives from their contribution to
effective teaching and learning. Thus, instruction for mildly mentally re-
tarded children both the quality offered and the setting in which it is
best provided are at the fore of the panel's concerns and recommenda-
tions.
This chapter begins by attempting to specify the characteristics of effec-
tive education for mildly mentally retarded children. With these charac-
teristics in mind we are able to address two core policy questions: (1) Are
separate classes for mildly mentally retarded children needed, or can such
children be as well or better served in the regular classroom? (2) Does the
mentally retarded label as used in current practice specify unique instruc-
tional programs, warranting a separate categorical grouping of children,
or would a more general designation be just as useful in delivering educa-
tional services?
Our question then becomes: What is effective education for mildly men-
tally retarded students? The apparent simplicity of this question is il-
lusory, and the difficulty of arriving at a simple answer is in great measure
The panel would like to thank Gaea Leinhardt, who helped gather evidence and who con-
sulted extensively with us during the preparation of this chapter.
74
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75
a function of the difficulty of deciding who is and who is not mildly men-
tally retarded. At the very heart of the demand for special education is the
assumption that all children do not prosper under identical educational
programs. The aim of the enterprise, the reason for elaborate assessment
and placement procedures, is to match children and treatments so that
each child is treated optimally. By definition, then, what is good or effec-
tive instruction is supposed to depend on the kind of children involved.
This means that programs can only be evaluated with respect to a properly
identified class of children. If an instructional program is not successful in
a given case, it might not be a poor program but rather a misapplication
to a given child or group of children.
Some of the difficulties that we address here emerge from attempts to
transform educational practices that were originally based on clinical
practice for a highly select population into a special education program
for a much wider range of students that must accommodate the bureau-
cratic constraints of the public school. In the area of mental retardation,
as in other areas of special education such as learning disabilities, many
accepted principles of instruction have been based on careful observation
and a tutorial type of instruction with highly atypical children. While this
knowledge was being applied within the public school environment,
changes were taking place in the identified population of exceptional
children and in the educational practices that were functional within that
setting (Cruickshank, 1967; Dunn, 1973~. For example, clinical popula-
tions often include more severely handicapped individuals, while schools
enroll children with mild or moderate handicapping conditions; clinical
settings are usually able to provide individual tutorial instruction, while
financial and organizational factors restrict schools to small-group instruc-
tion or separate special classes; clinicians often identify unique diagnostic
problems of individuals, while schools tend to recognize more general prob-
lems of poor performance.
It was not the original intention of special educators that all children
with school problems or minor difficulties in adjustment or coping be eli-
gible for special education services. In recent years, however, public sup-
port for special education has been expanded to include a significant
number of children with school problems or behavioral difficulties. Legal
requirements and fiscal incentives have moved educators to identify and
place more and more students in special education programs (U.S. De-
partment of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1979a). As mentioned pre-
viously, the jury is still out as to the most effective placement for these
students.
As we noted in Chapter 2, the variation and changes in the definition of
educable mental retardation complicate the task of deciding what is effec
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REPORT OF THE PANEL
five education for mildly mentally retarded children, since it is unclear
who should be classified as mentally retarded. The research on which we
are able to draw has generally accepted the classifications made by school
districts and sought statistically significant effects for groups of children
with the mildly mentally retarded label. But these groups have usually
been more heterogeneous than the common label implies. Since effective
instruction for a given child is likely to depend more on his or her actual
characteristics as a learner than on the classification as mentally retarded,
the reliance on institutional labels to characterize children necessarily
limits the kinds of conclusions that can be drawn from this research.
A further limitation in the use of existing research concerns historical
changes in labeling practices in the schools. There has been a sharp de-
crease in the number of students classified as educable mentally retarded
(EMR) in the past several years, with a concomitant increase in the num-
ber of children labeled as learning disabled (U.S. Department of Educa-
tion, 19801. Children who are currently in the EMR category, especially
those in self-contained classrooms, may therefore be more disabled than
their counterparts of previous years. Research on this older cohort may
not be generalizable to the current group of EMR children.
Special education for mildly mentally retarded children has grown from
the widespread observation that children with generally low mental ability
fare poorly in regular school programs. It is generally assumed that such
children lack abilities, such as the ability to abstract or to transfer knowl-
edge, that are assumed in regular instruction. These children are there-
fore expected to profit from an adapted curriculum and teaching pro-
cedures that make fewer assumptions of concept mastery; provide more
explicit and more numerous examples through concrete experiences;
allow more active participation in "hands-on" experiences by students;
provide structure into which learners can insert specific information; and
include specific efforts to build improved social cooperation skills, self-
esteem, and work habits (Goldstein, 1974, 1975~.
To accomplish these goals it is assumed that specially trained teachers
and/or support staffs are required. Yet these special services can, at least
in theory, be provided under a number of different institutional arrange-
ments, including (1) the separate class structure, in which children are as-
signed to a special EMR class conducted by a specially trained teacher who
provides a unique curriculum for the children for a full school day; (2) the
resource room structure, in which the basic assignment of the child is to a
regular class, but the child is removed for special instruction by a specially
trained teacher for a portion of the school day; and (3) the teacher/consul-
tant model, in which a specialist advises the regular teacher on special
tasks and lessons that can aid the exceptional child, but all instruction is
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77
given in the regular classroom. We consider instruction under all of these
arrangements as we attempt to define effective instruction for mildly men-
tally retarded students.
EVIDENCE ON EFFECTIVE INSTRUCTION
FOR MILDLY MENTALLY RETARDED CHILDREN
Despite several decades of research it remains difficult to gather definitive
evidence on the nature of effective instruction for mildly mentally retarded
children. In addition to problems created by shifting definitions of the
EMR population? there are reasons for the lack of evidence that lie deep in
the prevailing tradition of educational research, a tradition in which re-
search on mental retardation has quite naturally shared. Much of this re-
search has set out to test whether some new program is better than "stan-
dard" practice. Groups of children in the new and the standard programs
are compared on some outcome measures, but the programs themselves
are not analyzed, nor is the actual functioning of children within them
assessed. The result is a "black box" evaluation, comparing outcomes of
differently labeled treatments without attempting to determine what fea-
tures of the programs or treatments are responsible for the observed out-
comes. Indeed, it is characteristic of most of these studies that only the
most global descriptions of the educational treatments are offered. Typi-
cally, we are able to learn of class size and something about the age and
perhaps IQ distributions of the children in the classes. Little detail is of-
fered concerning the actual curricula being used, nor are there usually ob-
servations of how children interact with teachers, other children, or the
curriculum materials. ~
Other methodological limitations in the bulk of the research on instruc-
tion for mentally retarded children must also be noted. The most impor-
tant are a failure to randomize treatment and control groups, so that sub-
sequent comparisons of the effects of treatment can assume equality of
initial status, and a tendency to rely on statistical significance between
treatments even when differences are too small to reflect important differ-
ences in educational outcomes. Like other education research, research on
mental retardation has also suffered from a lack of appropriate outcome
measures. In most instances, those domains have been measured that
This lack of attention to curricula partially reflects the fact that few systematically devel-
oped curricula have been available to teachers of EMR classes, forcing them to modify cur-
ricula themselves or to develop their own. It was not until the late 1960s that the Office of
Education invested in curriculum development for mildly mentally retarded students, and
then only to a limited extent.
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REPORT OF THE PANEL
could be measured easily. This means that IQ and achievement scores are
most often available, whereas changes in personality, behavior, or social
processes, which are more difficult to define and measure, are neglected.
With these limitations in mind we turn to a consideration of the
research on effective instruction for mildly mentally retarded children. We
consider first the pervading question of setting do mildly mentally
retarded children fare best in separate classes, or do they do better when
allowed to remain in regular classrooms? We then examine the specific
features of instruction that appear to be helpful for EMR children. This
"feature analysis" allows us to raise in a new light the question of whether
separate labels for different categories of special students are useful in
providing appropriate education for these children.
THE QUE STION OF SETTING
Until very recently, research on effective education for mentally retarded
students generally addressed the question of the kind of administrative
setting in which mentally retarded children would fare best. At stake in
most studies was the practice of creating separate classes for children
identified as mildly mentally retarded. Prom the 1930s to about 1970,
most studies shared an initial hypothesis favoring such separate classes a
hypothesis dictated by the widely shared belief that mentally retarded
children needed both smaller classes and a distinctively different cur-
riculum emphasis from that for "normal" children. A respectable number
of studies accumulated data comparing the performance of mildly men-
tally retarded children in self-contained classes with the performance of
such children in regular classes. Several summaries of this literature
(Kaufman and Alberto, 1976; MacMillan and Meyers, 1979; MacMillan
et al., 1974) indicate that no clear judgment about the two settings for in-
struction can be made on the basis of this research. With respect to
academic performance (usually measured by standardized achievement
tests), there is a slight favoring of regular class placement (e.g., Bennett,
1932; Cassidy and Stanton, 1959; Mullen and Itkin, 1961), but many
studies showed no reliable differences between the two placements (e.g.,
Blatt, 1958; Goldstein et al., 1965~.
Beginning in the early 1970s, professional and public opinion came to
favor less segregation of the handicapped. The shift in opinion was proba-
bly fueled only in small part by the disappointing performance of children
in separate special classrooms. A more powerful impetus appears to have
been the growing press for fuller participation of all kinds of "minority"
groups including the handicapped- in the mainstream of public and
social life. Whatever the impetus, the increasing interest in "mainstream
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79
ing" of the handicapped led to a new round of studies, testing the hypoth-
esis that mildly mentally retarded children would prosper if they spent all
or some of their school time with their "normal" peers. These main-
streamed students were not, however, to be left in ordinary classrooms to
fare as they might. Instead they were to be identified as mentally retarded,
and special services were to be provided either by the regular teacher sup-
ported by a specialist or by a specialist teacher with whom the mentally re-
tarded child spent part of the day. The separate classroom for mentally
retarded children now became the "standard" practice on which main-
streaming was to improve.
As in the earlier round of research, findings concerning the academic
effects of mainstreaming have been contradictory (Corman and Gottlieb,
1978; Heller, in this volume; Jones et al., 19781. There is no clear favoring
of either separate classes or full-time mainstreaming; each showed more
favorable effects in some studies and less favorable effects in others. The
resource room, a special instructional environment to which children are
assigned for a part of the day, spending the remainder in the regular class-
room, often but not always shows favorable effects in comparison with
separate classes and full-time placement in regular classes. But children
sometimes do best in regular classrooms in which their own teachers are
assisted in providing special instruction. There is some evidence that
children with initially higher IQs do better in regular classrooms and that
those with lower IQs fare best in separate classrooms. However, even this
common sense conclusion cannot be asserted with confidence on the basis
of the research to date.
Our discussion thus far, like much of the research literature, has focused
heavily on academic outcomes. As noted above, however, many studies
have included one or more measures of social adjustment or self-concept.
On the measures used, especially those assessing children's judgments of
themselves, children in self-contained classrooms tended to rate them-
selves somewhat better than did children who remained in regular class-
rooms (see the review by Heller in this volume). Children in self-contained
classrooms displayed more positive self-concepts. In more recent work
that compares mainstream with separate class treatment, the results are
more contradictory. In both bodies of research, there are major design
problems that further confound any effort to decide what the real effects
are. These include the problem of instrumentation there is little una-
nimity in the field as to what a good self-concept is or how to measure
it and the problem of finding appropriately matched groups for the
various treatments. Often, the mainstreamed children were those who, in
the judgment of various professionals, were more competent and were
believed to be better able to function in the regular classroom. This makes
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comparisons, particularly on measures of social adjustment and self-
concept, virtually impossible; techniques of covariance may be difficult to
apply because the measures do not meet necessary scaling assumptions.
Finally, most of the research available that is relevant to this question is,
like the research on achievement outcomes, a "black box" with respect to
the actual treatment involved.
FEATURES OF EFFECTIVE INSTRUCTION
The most obvious conclusions from these kinds of inconclusive findings
over several decades of research is that the instructional setting per se does
not matter, that mildly mentally retarded children can do equally well or
equally poorly in both kinds of settings. Yet this finding may mask some
very real and important regularity in effects on children. Perhaps there are
features of the educational treatment received by mentally retarded children
that do systematically affect outcomes but that are not uniquely associated
with any particular setting for instruction. Perhaps those studies that show a
benefit for one setting or another were comparing programs with some
specific features that are responsible for the effects. Reported as a com-
parison between self-contained and regular class or mainstreamed settings,
we learn nothing from these studies about what these features might be.
Fortunately, a few recent studies offer descriptions of the educational
process that are detailed enough to permit us to address the question of
which features of instruction seem to be beneficial for mildly mentally
retarded children. While the number of such studies is not large, there is
substantial consistency in what has been found to be effective instruc-
tional practice for children with the mildly mentally retarded label.
Academic Outcomes
Several studies have documented academic gains for EMR children through
the use of individualized "behavioral" methods of instruction (Bradfield
et al., 1973; Haring and Krug, 1975; Jenkins and Mayhall, 1976; Knight
et al., 19811. In the instructional programs studied, work assignments
were given on a daily basis so that the teacher rather than the child deter-
mined the pace of work; a mastery learning approach was used in which
detailed records and charts of progress (usually based on tests directly
covering the curriculum content) were kept for each child; systematic rein-
forcement was used, and significant amounts of one-to-one instruction,
sometimes by peer tutors, were offered. In general, these procedures re-
sulted in larger amounts of time spent on academic work and in a heavy over-
lap between what was taught and what was tested in the instruments used to
assess academic progress.
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81
Although the practices described in these studies did not create
academic stars of EMR-labeled children, clear learning benefits were
achieved. It is striking that the settings in which these treatments were
carried out varied from the self-contained EMR classrooms (Haring and
Krug, 1975) to resource rooms (Jenkins and Mayhall, 1976) to regular
classrooms (Bradfield et al., 1973; Knight et al., 1981~. This fact, al-
though based on a small number of studies, offers striking confirmation of
the conclusion reached by Corman and Gottlieb (1978:257~: "As a whole,
these studies [of effectiveness] suggest that particular instructional tech-
niques may be of greater relevance to improved achievement than the fact
that these techniques are used in one of many possible integrated settings."
A striking characteristic of the list of features associated with effective
academic skill instruction for mildly mentally retarded students is its
similarity to the features identified for other categories of children in aca-
demic difficulty and, indeed, for the school population as a whole. In the
"effective schools" research (e.g., Brookover and Lezotte, 1979; Venezky
and Winfield, 1979; Weber, 1971) features of school organization that are
associated with good academic performance among poor and minority
children include an emphasis on the direct teaching of basic skills and the
frequent assessment of progress. Both are also features of effective in-
struction for mildly mentally retarded populations.
A number of large-scale studies (e.g., the Beginning Teacher Evalua-
tion Study [Fisher et al., 1978i, the Follow Through Evaluation [Stebbins
et al., 1977], and the Instructional Dimensions Study [Cooley and Lein-
hardt, 1980~) identify features of classroom organization and process that
are associated with good academic performance in schools with high pro-
portions of children receiving compensatory education (i.e., poor and mi-
nority children). These studies, all conducted in large numbers of class-
rooms, took advantage of naturally occurring variations in instruction,
rather than attempting to use control groups, random assignments, and
other characteristics of experimental designs that can only be approx-
imated in real school settings. They converge on a set of descriptors of
"direct instruction" (see Rosenshine and Berliner, 1978) that include high
content overlap between learning activities and criterion (test) tasks, built-
in formal assessment techniques, increased time on academic tasks, teacher
pacing, and the use of motivating management systems (i.e., some form of
contingent reward).
Social Outcomes
As we indicated earlier, the rationale for special education for mildly men-
tally retarded students includes, even stresses, the social goals and out-
comes that should be part of an educational plan for such children. The
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theory has been that mentally retarded children. require special social en-
vironments for two different but related reasons: (1) they tend to interact
poorly with "normal" children, to experience rejection, and, in part as a
result, to develop weaker self-concepts and (2) they lack certain specific
social and adaptive skills and require special training in these that is not
necessary for other children.
A line of research that avoids the "black box" problem in that it is
directly concerned with techniques for training social skills has been
recently reviewed by Gresham (1981~. Gresham summarizes a large num-
ber of studies that examined training techniques derived from social
learning theory. The focus in these training efforts was on various aspects
of social behavior as actually observed in the classroom and on social ac-
ceptance by peers (using peer sociometric ratings and teacher ratings),
with little attention to the less easily definable construct of self-concept.
Many of the training techniques studied have been viewed as suitable or
necessary only for the severely disabled or sometimes the institutionalized
mentally retarded population. For this reason a large portion of the
research has been conducted in separate classes rather than in main-
stream settings as well as with populations not directly relevant to this
panel's concern. A large segment of the research on what are termed
social skills has really been directed at increasing "classroom appropriate"
behavior (staying in one's seat, attending to the assigned task, not talking
out, etc.) or at minimizing disruptive behavior, rather than at building
social interaction skills or enhancing peer acceptance.
Research dealing with mildly handicapped populations (including but
not usually limited to EMR children) suggests that techniques such as ar-
ranging game playing to include the handicapped child and having peers
initiate social interaction can increase interaction and peer acceptance
(Aloia et al., 1978; Ballard et al., 1977~. More direct teaching of social
skills for example, by providing competent models, rewarding the
models, having children rehearse the social skills, and providing feed-
back has been shown in a few studies to build certain social skills (e.g.,
Bondy and Erickson, 1976; Cooke and Apolloni, 1976~. There is little evi-
dence, however, for the generalization and maintenance of these skills be-
yond the training setting. Furthermore, while a considerable body of re-
search points toward the general effectiveness of behavioral and social
learning methods, there is a paucity of demonstrations of effectiveness in
actual classrooms for mildly mentally retarded children.
A few comprehensive intervention programs for mildly mentally retarded
students have focused on social skills. Perhaps the best known is Gold-
stein's Social Learning Curriculum (Goldstein, 1974, 1975~. The principal
focus of the curriculum is on the promotion of socially adaptive behavior,
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83
accomplished by teaching children to think critically and to act in-
dependently. The teacher transmits content through a special inductive
teaching methodology (ITM), which aims to induce systematic and self-
conscious problem-solving behavior. Although extensive field testing has
been undertaken the Social Learning Curriculum has been introduced
in approximately 300 classes in 29 states much of the work conducted
during the field testing focused on testing the theoretical assumptions un-
derlying the curriculum, developing new units, and revising others, and
no summative evaluation data were collected.
In general there does not seem to be as clear a set of conclusions to draw
about the effective teaching of social skills and the promotion of social ac-
ceptance of mildly mentally retarded children as there is for academic
development.
Cognitive Process Skills
There is a line of instructional research on mentally retarded children that
has been increasingly prominent in recent years and that may have impor-
tant practical applications in the future. This is research on the direct
training of those cognitive abilities that are thought to underlie the men-
tally retarded person's difficulties in learning under ordinary school con-
ditions. The first phase of research on process deficits in mentally retarded
students largely served to identify specific processing skills that were weak
in children with low IQs. Prominent among such skills were rehearsal and
other techniques of memorizing that were shown to be spontaneously used
by normal children but not by mentally retarded learners. Several in-
vestigators showed that mentally retarded individuals could be trained to
use various mnemonic techniques. However, in study after study it was
found that the newly acquired learning skill was applied only to the
specific task for which it had been trained, that there was little or no
generalization and thus no general improvement in the cognitive function-
ing of the trained individuals (e.g., Brown and Barclay, 1976; Butterfield
et al., 1973; Engle and Nagle, 1979; Turnure et al., 19761. More recently,
a few studies showing some generalization and maintenance of learning
skills of various kinds have begun to accumulate (Belmont et al., 1980;
Brown, 1978; Chipman et al., in press; Segal et al., in press), and there is
new optimism in some quarters about the potential for actually improving
the cognitive functioning of mentally retarded learners.
Most of the studies clearly showing the acquisition of learning skills
have been conducted with small samples under laboratory-like conditions
rather than under normal school conditions. However, several programs
currently being tested and refined in school settings have strong learning
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skill/problem-solving orientations. These include the Instrumental En-
richment Program (Feuerstein et al., 1980) and other programs that teach
inductive problem-solving skills to mentally retarded learners (e.g., I. L.
Smith, 1980~. A shared feature of the instruction in these programs is
their focus on teaching children to monitor their own thinking and to plan
strategies for learning and remembering as well as to solve social prob-
lems. All the programs rely heavily on social interaction between the stu-
dent and a highly skilled, specially trained teacher. Discussion and analysis
of problems and learning tasks seem to be required but are difficult to ar-
range in a self-study mode and seem to require the grouping of children ac-
cording to their need for learning skill instruction. As research continues
and as more extensive field data on these programs become available, learn-
ing skill procedures may emerge as a supplement or alternative to individual
mastery-oriented direct teaching of academic skills.
CONCLU SIONS
INSTRUCTIONAL SErrING
What conclusions can be drawn from the research literature concerning
the appropriate setting and instructional processes for mildly mentally
retarded students? On the whole we are forced to conclude that adminis-
trative setting, in and of itself, does not determine whether an educational
program is effective or appropriate. Rather it is the things that go on in
that setting that matter. In principle, any setting can serve as an ap-
propriate educational environment for mentally retarded children if cer-
tain principles of instruction are observed. Many observers agree that
because of the belief that mentally retarded children cannot learn well,
less is often demanded of them than might be. In classes for mentally
retarded students there is little "cognitive press" (Leinhardt and Pallay,
1981) and often a sharply reduced curriculum, so that children in these
classes are deprived of the opportunity to learn standard academic skills.
There is no intrinsic reason why the cognitive press of a separate class for
mentally retarded children cannot be increased. Nevertheless, a classroom
of children bearing the label mentally retarded does not typically seem to
evoke high expectations and, therefore, the academic demand on them
may be reduced (Fine, 1967; Heintz, 1974; Meyen and Hieronymous,
1970; Salvia et al., 1973~.
Unless this tendency can be overcome, it argues not only for reduced
use of separate classes but also for reduced use of the label mentally
retarded, since it seems likely that the tendency to lower cognitive
demands would be applied to individual children as well as to groups. But
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85
there may be other reasons for lack of cognitive press than lowered expec-
tations. If, in a class of children even a small class all children require
a great deal of teacher attention in order to stay "on task" and thus make
reasonable cognitive gains, it may be difficult or impossible to set high
standards for the rate of progress through a curriculum. This argues for
either heterogeneous class grouping, in which only a few children need
substantial and frequent attention, or a tutorial-like setting, in which a
single child at a time can be attended to. The regular classroom provides a
heterogeneous setting, but there is some evidence that, except in certain
specially designed individualized settings, the great heterogeneity coupled
with the larger class size often double that of the special classroom-
makes it difficult for the special child to receive adequate attention.
Some kind of identification of the child is required if he or she is to
receive the special attention needed. A practical solution in some cases
seems to lie in the resource room, a special teaching/learning laboratory
to which the child identified as in need of special help is assigned for a
limited period each day, in which instruction is given on a one-to-one basis
or in very small groups, and adequate monitoring and rewarding by the
teacher (or paraprofessional or peer tutor) is possible. However, to be
assigned to this resource room, some kind of identification procedure is
needed. Thus it appears that except perhaps in specially designed
mainstream classrooms a complete absence of labeling would also imply
an absence of the kind of special instructional treatment needed by the
child.
CATEGORICAL LABELING
Some form of identification of children is likely to be required if they are
to receive the kind of special education services that they need and to
which the law entitles them. The identification of children in need of
special services does not necessarily imply that distinct categories of hand-
icaps need to be specified or that special education services should be
delivered according to the categorical label that a child carries. Current
special education practice as well as much theory divides children with
academic difficulties into several categories, the most important of which
are the mentally retarded and the learning-disabled (LD) categories. To
what extent does the evidence on effective instruction support this prac-
tice? That is, do EMR and LD children profit from distinctly different in-
structional treatments, or do the same features of effective instruction ap-
ply to both groups?
An extensive body of theory discriminates LD children from mildly
mentally retarded children (Cruickshank et al., 1961; Lerner, 1976;
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Strauss and Lehtinen, 1947~. While the mentally retarded group is seen as
being generally low in all aspects of mental functioning as well as having
difficulties in social adaptation, LD children are expected to show uneven
profiles of abilities (being strong in some areas and weak in others) and to
have IQ scores higher than those of EMR children. Further, social skills
are not identified as a major weakness in this category of children. The
uneven profile of a LD child points, according to the theory, to an instruc-
tional program that is specifically adaptive to particular areas of strength
and weakness. A dominant instructional model for LD children involves
differential diagnosis and prescriptive teaching aimed at weaknesses in
such areas as psycholinguistic skills, perceptual skills, motor skills, and
the like. The underlying theory is that, through correction of these
cognitive skill deficits, the child's ability to learn school subjects will im-
prove.
A wide variety of programs designed to implement this instructional
theory has been developed. It is difficult, however, to assemble strong
evidence for the effectiveness of these programs in improving academic
skills. While some of the identified cognitive subskills have been shown to
be amenable to improvement through instruction (e.g., Kavale, 1981),
there is little evidence to date that such training transfers to academic
skills such as reading or mathematics or that teaching methods that adapt
to skill deficits by making use of strong cognitive skills are more effective
(Arter and Jenkins, 1981~. A small but respectable body of evidence is
available suggesting that direct instruction in academic subjects is effec-
tive for LD children (Baseman, 1979; Leinhardt and Pallay, 1981~. The
key features of this direct instruction are shared with those identified as
effective for mildly mentally retarded children.
On the basis of documented effective practice in schools to date, it ap-
pears that basically the same kind of instructional processes may be needed
for LD children as for mildly mentally retarded children. It should be
noted that there is at least one other large group of children with academic
difficulties who do not acquire special education labels but who never-
theless receive special instructional services in their schools. These are the
children who by reason of low family income and poor performance on
achievement tests are assigned to various compensatory education pro-
grams usually in particular academic subjects for a part of each school
day. The accumulating evidence about these children also suggests that
the same features of direct, externally paced, and formally monitored in-
struction in academic content that have been noted for mentally retarded
children produce the best learning results (Leinhardt et al., in press).
If these three theoretically distinct groups of children seem to-prosper
best under the same kind of instruction, there is good reason for calling
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into question the traditional system of categorical labeling within special
education. At the very least, the burden of proof now seems to lie with
those who would defend the traditional divisions within special education.
SUMMARY AND SOME CAUTIONS
The current evidence on instruction for mildly mentally retarded students
seems to offer some clear directions for policy and for classroom practice.
First, we can find little empirical justification for categorical labeling that
discriminates mildly mentally retarded children from other children with
academic difficulties, such as LD children or children receiving compen-
satory education.2 Second, while there are fewer well-documented studies
with clear results than we might wish, the weight of the evidence clearly
points to a group of instructional practices that seem to benefit all of these
types of children. Intense direct instructional methods, described earlier
in this chapter, seem to be applicable in a variety of settings, from the
separate special classroom to the mainstream classroom, and they are not
different in spirit from the methods that appear to have been generally ef-
fective in schools that serve children with poor prognoses for academic
success.
This similarity in the features of instructional treatments offers some
hope that some proportion of the children now recognized as in need of
special education might be reduced through the provision of more effec-
tive regular instruction, especially in schools with high minority represen-
tations. Of course, there is nothing in the evidence to date to suggest that
an important subset of children who need more intensive attention, and
thus more resources than the ordinary classroom is able to provide, will
not continue to exist. Providing adequate services to these children will
probably require some kind of identification and hence labeling. The
labels need not categorize the children but can instead describe the types
of special intensive instruction they need.
The question of appropriate setting for instruction appears to be one of
administrative manageability rather than one of instructional theory. In
keeping with the general public sentiment favoring a minimum of social
separation between different segments of the population, there should
probably be some favoring of mainstream classroom or resource-room ar
2As we have noted, this statement refers explicitly to mildly mentally retarded children. Re-
cent practice, responding in part to legal challenges to EMR placement for minority
children, has in some states and local areas tended to reserve the EMR label for children who
show very serious and sustained learning difficulties. The available research, by contrast, is
based on a much more heterogeneous group of children that includes many with only mild
dysfunctions.
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REPORT OF THE PANEL
rangements over separate classes. This does not mean, however, that
children in need of intensive help should simply be put back in the regular
classroom without recognized special status and without appropriate as-
sistance for the classroom teacher. In planning instruction for the special
child, primary attention should be directed to the specific features of the
instructional treatments that have been identified as fostering academic
progress in children with initial poor performance.
Although these broad conclusions seem to be well supported by the
evidence at hand, we believe it is important to point to some cautions that
must be kept in mind in formulating a policy that may well have far-reach-
ing and long-lasting effects on the kinds of educational opportunities and
services offered to children. The caveats that should be kept in mind are
discussed below.
MASKING INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
At the beginning of this chapter we indicated that most research on in-
struction for mildly mentally retarded students has proceeded as if the
children with the EMR label were homogeneous with respect to cognitive
capabilities and instructional needs. One possible effect of such research,
which treats heterogeneous groups of children as if each had the same
needs and capabilities and of examining only the group effects of in-
struction is that so much error variance is produced that potentially real
differences in program characteristics that benefit children are statisti-
cally masked. This may be part of the reason for the preponderance of
findings of no difference in the instructional effectiveness literature. If the
definitions of mild mental retardation and learning disability were to be
made tighter in future research- so that only individuals who were clearly
those hypothesized to benefit most from a particular treatment were in-
cluded in an evaluation we might begin to obtain a clearer picture of ef-
fects. Such a trend in research findings would surely temper the conclu-
sion that there is little basis for distinguishing between mildly mentally
retarded children and others with academic difficulties.
On the other hand, in the course of further specification of who is to be
considered an EMR or an LD child, it is to be expected that potentially
important changes in the current definitions of mild mental retardation
and learning disability would be suggested. Thus, there is little likelihood
that such research would end up supporting current categorical labeling
practice, although it might provide confirmation of some of the theoretical
distinctions that experts in special education now offer. In any event, what
seems crucial is that any policy of decategorization adopted in response to
the current scientific evidence should not be constructed so as to actively
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prohibit the kinds of research on differential instruction that would be re-
quired to arrive at relevant distinctions among children with academic dif-
ficulties.
UNKNOWN EFFECTS ON OTHER CHILDREN
Integrating more special education students into regular programs may
affect the achievement of the "normal" students. The limited data that
are available on the effects of mainstreaming on children in regular pro-
grams suffer from the same problems that apply to the literature we re-
viewed on the effects of instructional setting on EMR children (see Heller
in this volume for a review of the existing data on this topic). More critical
from our standpoint are the effects of instructional processes that appear
to benefit low-achieving children on students in the average or higher
ranges. Along with research that identifies specific features of effective in-
struction for the special child should be an equally direct look at the ef-
fects of these features on other students in the classroom as well. Research
in two related areas the effects of grouping by ability or "tracking" and
aptitude-treatment interactions may shed some light on this issue. For
reviews of the literature on those areas, see Calfee and Brown (1979),
Cronbach and Snow (1977), and Esposito (1973~.
BEHAVIORAL BIAS IN RE SEARCH
Behaviorally oriented, direct instruction approaches have clearly emerged
as the direction of effective practice in research to date, although there are
reasons to remain open to changes in the weight of evidence in the longer
run. First, for a variety of reasons rooted in both scientific and social value
systems of the past two decades or so, behaviorally oriented researchers
have focused more on academic skills and on clear outcome measurement
and reporting than have other groups of researchers concerned with the
same broad issues. For this reason, their work has had clearer, better doc-
umented results than some potentially competing or supplementary ap-
proaches. For example, the direct instruction approach as it has been
used and documented to date favors a step-by-step, practice-oriented ap-
proach to education.
Approaches other than direct instruction have been less well analyzed
and documented at the present time; nevertheless, they may also be effec-
tive. For example, several programs (e.g., SEED, Renee Fuller's reading
program for mentally retarded children) that claim strong results rely less
on step-by-step methods and more on the general reasoning skills of
students. Strong evidence other than the claims of those involved and of
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REPORT OF THE PANEL
occasional observers for the effectiveness of these programs with mildly
mentally retarded students is not available at this time. Nevertheless,
these programs and others like them deserve careful investigation. The
results of such investigations may lead to clearer specification of when and
for whom behavioral step-by-step methods are needed and when other ap-
proaches which may have important "fringe benefits" in the kind of
general adaptive capacities that they promote may be preferred. Simi-
larly, the cognitive-process training programs discussed earlier in this
chapter also suggest an alternative or supplement to direct step-by-step in-
struction in academic skills. Again, no strong evaluative evidence is cur-
rently available concerning these approaches. However, it is important
that they continue to be investigated and that practical policy be for-
mulated in a way that remains open to the implementation of the findings
that emerge.
EVALUATION CRITERIA
As we have noted, the research evidence on which conclusions concerning
effective education are based relies heavily on a particular set of outcome
criteria. These can be characterized as oriented to "basic skills": the cen-
tral basis for deciding what features constitute effective instruction has
been their contribution to improved performance on mathematics and
reading tests of various kinds. Neither social outcomes nor other kinds of
learning e.g., the acquisition of knowledge relevant to functioning in a
job or using various community resources has received an equivalent
amount of attention. Similarly, certain characteristics of individuals for-
merly educated in EMR programs, such as their employment, earnings,
family lives, etc., may be sensitive indicators of the effectiveness of EMR
programs yet remain at this time largely uncharted.
A focus on basic academic skills as a criterion is appropriate for a popu-
lation whose major reason for referral to special education is academic dif-
ficulty. This is particularly true for younger children perhaps ages 8
through 12 or 13-when there is reason to hope that with intensive in-
structional efforts the child can return to a regular classroom program
with a competent level of basic skill performance. For children who con-
tinue to have difficulty in acquiring basic skills, other educational goals
and curricula, especially those related to specific vocational and social
adaptive skills, take on increasing importance. It may well be the case that
a differentiated set of outcomes for older mildly mentally retarded chil-
dren will prescribe somewhat more education in separate classes than is
necessary for younger children who have recently been identified as having
academic problems. The vast majority of the research that we reviewed
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has been conducted on children younger than age 12 or 13. The appro-
priate instruction of and placement for special education students at the
secondary level is a largely undiscussed issue without firm research under
plnnlngs.
CONCLUSION
For all of these reasons the panel believes it is essential that a clear distinc-
tion be made between recommendations for current "normal" practice
and those for investigation that may eventually lead to changed views of
"best" practice. While the educator facing the practical challenge of of-
fering immediate educational services to children will do well to incor-
porate the features of direct instruction that have been outlined here, the
total educational system must continue to be open to efforts to determine
still better procedures, even if these point toward complex revisions in cur-
rent practice. Thus, we do not recommend any single structure for the or-
ganization of special education. Rather we endorse a policy that allows for
new approaches side by side with vigorous application of our best current
knowledge about effective instruction.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
mildly mentally
