The National Association of Special Education Teachers (NASET) empowers special education teachers, advocates, and professionals with practical training, trusted resources, and meaningful connections - supporting those who make a difference in the lives of students with diverse learning needs.
Happy Friday! We hope you have a relaxing final weekend of August! Here's the news you may have missed this week
As the new school year begins, special education systems continue to face mounting pressure. Federal attention on autism is drawing scrutiny as agencies built to protect autistic children face cuts and HHS announced plans to create a national autism elopement alert system.
On the funding front, states are under mounting pressure to build special education funding systems that actually match what services cost. Three strategies experts recommend: grounding funding in evidence-based service costs rather than historical spending patterns, adjusting for the wide variation in student needs, and protecting districts from extraordinary costs through separate high-cost pools, which 36 states now offer. In California, a new analysis found the state's attendance-based funding model is failing schools as enrollment declines while special education enrollment climbs, with 15% of students now qualifying for services. Tennessee lawmakers are weighing whether to fully fund pre-K special education programs, Connecticut announced $10 million in grant funding to expand in-district special education, and families in Pittsburgh warned that special education services could suffer under the district's proposed school closures plan.
On the workforce and research fronts, new coverage looked at the emerging promise of teacher apprenticeship programs as a way to address the special education workforce shortage. The largest and most diverse study of its kind, tracking 3,339 mother-child pairs, found that everyday prenatal exposure to organophosphate pesticides is not linked to autism-related traits in children, though researchers cautioned the findings don't rule out risk at higher agricultural or occupational exposure levels. A new randomized trial pushed back on the long-standing default of fitting two hearing aids for older adults with age-related hearing loss, and a preschool hearing screening study found that traditional pure-tone audiometry fails to complete on a significant share of 3-to-5-year-olds, with otoacoustic emission testing catching children the standard test misses — a meaningful finding for districts running early childhood screening programs.
Worksheets, webinars, trivia and more below - read on!
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Hello from the NASET Break Room - our quick pulse check on the state of special education based on trending posts and questions we saw online this week.
Last Week:
Do you feel your school has clear, legally sound protocols for physical intervention and restraint?
Yes, we have clear protocols and regular training ✅ (44%)
When you started in special education, how prepared did you feel on day one?
Somewhat ready but the reality was a shock 😬 (63%)
Have you ever helped a family navigate whether to disclose a student's disability to classmates or peers?
Yes, it's come up more than once 🤝 (33%)
No, but I wish I had more guidance on it 📋 (29%)
That decision has always stayed with the family 🤷♀️ (37%)
Do you think your school adequately accounts for the cumulative exhaustion of students who have to adapt constantly every single day?
No - we focus on skills, not the toll it takes 😔
Sometimes, but it depends on the teacher 🔄
Yes, we build in recovery and flexibility intentionally 💪
Honestly, I'd never thought about it this way 🤔
Who do you think is most responsible for making co-teaching actually work?
The special education teacher 📋
The general education teacher 🍎
Administration - they set the conditions 🏫
It only works when both teachers are equally invested 🤝
Have you ever worked with a student where you weren't sure if reading difficulties were dyslexia, a language acquisition issue, or both?
Yes, regularly - it's one of the hardest calls I make 🎯
A few times, and I leaned on our evaluation team 🤔
Once - and I still don't know if we got it right 😬
No, our evaluation process handles this well ✅
🎁 The Gift Card Giveaway Continues
NASET is here to support you this school year, and our Built for Day One event is live through September 13.
Watch the recording of our FREE webinar with ARK Therapeutic + Katie Zelinski, MS, OTR/L, The Well-Balanced OT and you're automatically entered into our weekly $100 gift card drawings
We’ve selected two winners already and next week could be you!
Take our educator survey and receive a $5 gift card as our thank you
Lock in membership at $75/year forever before September 14
Yesterday, NASET’s Journal of the American Academy of Special Education Professionals (JAASEP), published a special issue focused on strengthening IEP and IFSP implementation within state and local systems.
📓 Explore it today | Members, Read it today
September Webinars
🙋 Wednesday September 9th at 7pm EST: Kids Do Well If They Can - Part 2: Implementing Dr. Ross Greene's Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (CPS) Model in Your Classroom Dr. Ross Greene, New York Times Bestselling author of The Explosive Child, returns for part 2 of his webinar series on implementing the tools which actually reduce discipline referrals, detentions, suspensions, restraint, and seclusion in both general education and special education classrooms.
👩💻 Register Today | Free for NASET Members♿️ Wednesday September 16th at 7pm EST: Disability Rights and the Classroom Join Dr. Michael Ashley Stein, Co-Founder of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability and a drafter of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, on where the rights of students with disabilities come from and where they're headed.
👩💻 Register Today🧩 Tuesday September 22nd at 7pm EST: Unlocking Communication:
What 40+ Years of Autism Research Tells Us About Minimally Verbal Students Join a pioneer in the field, Dr. Helen Tager-Flusberg, Professor Emerita in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Boston University and Director of the Center for Autism Research Excellence who has led the research answering the questions educators ask every day: How does language actually develop in children with autism? What predicts whether a minimally verbal student will gain spoken language? And what does the evidence say about how to support communication when speech is limited?
👩💻 Register Today | Free for NASET Members
From the NASET Vault
⬇️ NASET Support Squad Downloads of the Week Selecting the Right Reading Intervention Based on Student Data and Managing Large Special Education Caseloads Scroll down to instantly download ⬇️
🎓 Earn graduate credit with NASET for under $150! Through our partnership with Augustana University, we offer 2 graduate credit eligible courses for under $150.
✅ Complete coursework in our related services or IEP implementation course!
THE LEAD: SPECIAL EDUCATION UNDER PRESSURE
FUNDING & POLICY
RESEARCH
Looking for a new role? Join the NASET Talent Network!
Advance Your Career With Applied Behavior Analysis
Discover Drexel’s online Applied Behavior Analysis programs – master’s and certificates. Tailored for busy professionals, including educators and social workers – these programs empower you to help others succeed, while forging new career trails of your own, using well-established, evidence-based ABA principles, practices, and tools.
Shout Out to Last Week’s Winners Who Correctly Answered, “20 U.S.C. § 1412(a)(1), also known as Section 612(a)(1) of IDEA, implemented at 34 CFR § 300.101. We also accepted the Child Find provision (20 U.S.C. § 1412(a)(3) / 34 CFR § 300.111)” View the winners list here!
This Week's Question:
Why did the DSM-5 eliminate the previous subtypes (Asperger's, PDD-NOS, Autistic Disorder)?
Correctly answer 3 or more trivia questions each month to be eligible for a gift card! We had 25 winners in July!
What’s one resource you need this school year? Reply to this email and let us know!
Elevate Your Impact.
Drexel’s ABAI-Verified online programs give you a data-driven approach to understanding behavior and teaching new skills, especially for individuals with autism. You’ll gain hands-on experience and access to specialized concentrations that align with your goals. Prepare for advanced practice and new career opportunities. This program meets the behavior-analytic coursework requirements for those pursuing the BCBA pathway 2 eligibility route.
“Those who say it can't be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.”