Reinforcing Success

Abstract

Since 1966 when we began our careers in special education, we and others in our cohort have seen substantial changes in our discipline. In our personal experience, we had the opportunity to work together in situations that led us to focus on practices and procedures that produced better outcomes for our students, and better outcomes for students became our primary metric for assessing educational recommendations. Regardless of the rationale, theory, or appealing argument for them, we wanted to know whether a proposed procedure helps students with disabilities succeed. Sometimes those procedures need to be employed in special places. We explain how we came to this perspective, why we hope that perspective does not get lost amid contemporary reform efforts, and what we hope it will mean for the future.