Category: disabilities

  • California students with disabilities face ‘terrifying’ special ed cuts after Trump changes – The 74

    California students with disabilities face ‘terrifying’ special ed cuts after Trump changes – The 74


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    This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

    Sleep is a rare commodity at Lindsay Crain’s house. Most nights, she and her husband are up dozens of times, tending to their daughter’s seizures. The 16-year-old flails her arms, thrashes and kicks — sometimes for hours.

    But these days, that’s not the only thing keeping Crain awake. The Culver City mother worries about how President Donald Trump’s myriad budget cuts could strip their daughter of services she needs to go to school, live at home and enjoy a degree of independence that would have been impossible a generation ago.

    “Every family I know is terrified right now,” Crain said. “We still have to live our everyday lives, which are challenging enough, but now it feels like our kids’ futures are at stake.”

    Trump’s budget includes nearly $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, which funds a wide swath of services to disabled children, including speech, occupational and physical therapy, wheelchairs, in-home aides and medical care. All children with physical, developmental or cognitive disabilities – in California, nearly 1 million – receive at least some services through Medicaid.

    Meanwhile, at the U.S. Department of Education, Trump has gutted the Office of Civil Rights, which is among the agencies that enforce the 50-year-old law granting students with disabilities the right to attend school and receive an education appropriate to their needs. Before that law was enacted, students with disabilities often didn’t attend school at all.

    “We have a delicate web of services that, combined, support a whole child, a whole family,” said Kristin Wright, executive director of inclusive practices and systems at the Sacramento County Office of Education and the former California state director of special education. “So when the basic foundational structure is upended, like Medicaid, for example, it’s not just one cut from a knife. It’s multiple.”

    Republicans have also suggested moving the office of special education out of the Department of Education altogether and moving it to the Department of Health and Human Services. Disability rights advocates say that would bring a medical – rather than a social – lens to special education, which they described as a major reversal of progress.

    Trump has chipped away at other rights protecting people with disabilities, as well. In September, the U.S. Department of Transportation said it would not enforce a rule that requires airlines to reimburse passengers for damaged or lost wheelchairs. Trump has also repeatedly used the word “retarded,” widely considered a slur, alarming advocates who say it shows a lack of respect and understanding of the historical discrimination against people with disabilities. It’s all left some wondering if the administration plans more cuts to hard-fought rights protecting people with disabilities.

    Fewer therapists, less equipment

    The Medicaid cuts may have the most immediate effect. People with developmental disabilities typically receive therapy, home visits from aides, equipment and other services through regional centers, a network of 21 mostly government-funded nonprofits in California that coordinate services for people with disabilities. The goal of regional centers is to help people with disabilities live as independently as possible.

    More than a third of regional centers’ funding comes from Medicaid, which is facing deep cuts under Trump’s budget. The money runs out at the end of January, and it’s unclear what services will be cut.

    Schools also rely on Medicaid to pay for therapists, equipment, vision and hearing tests and other services that benefit all students, not just those with disabilities. In light of state budget uncertainty, it’s not likely the state could backfill the loss of Medicaid funding, and schools would have to pare down their services. 

    Uncertain futures

    For Lelah Coppedge, whose teenage son has cerebral palsy, the worst part is the uncertainty. She knows cuts are coming, but she doesn’t know when or what they’ll include.

    “I go down this rabbit hole of worst-case scenarios,” said Coppedge, who lives in the Canoga Park neighborhood in Los Angeles. “Before this happened, I felt there was a clear path for my son. Now that path is going away, and it’s terrifying.”

    Coppedge’s son, Jack, is a 16-year-old high school student who excels at algebra and physics. He loves video games and has a wide circle of friends at school. He uses a wheelchair and struggles with speech, communicating mostly through eye movements. He’ll look at his mom’s right hand to indicate “yes,” her left hand for “no.”

    Coppedge and her husband rely on a nurse who comes four days a week to help Jack get dressed, get ready for bed and do other basic activities. Medicaid pays for the nurse, as well as other services like physical therapy. Even though Coppedge and her husband both work and have high-quality private health insurance, they could not afford Jack’s care without help from the government.

    They also rely on the local regional center, which they assumed would help Jack after he graduates from high school, so he can remain at home, continue to hone his skills and generally live as independently as possible. If that funding vanishes, Coppedage worries Jack will someday end up in a facility where people don’t know him, don’t know how to communicate with him and don’t care about him.

    “It feels like we’re going backward,” Coppedge said. “Half the time, I put my head in the sand because I’m just trying to manage the day-to-day. The rest of the time I worry that (the federal government) is looking at people like Jack as medical problems, not as unique people who want to have full, happy lives. It feels like that’s getting lost.”

    The current uncertainty is stressful, but it’s even harder for families who are immigrants, Wright said. Those families are less likely to stand up for services they’re entitled to and are facing the extra fear of deportation. English learners, as well as low-income children, are disproportionately represented among students in special education, according to state data.

    “That’s the other piece to all this — how it’s affecting immigrant families,” Wright said. “It’s a whole other level of anxiety and fear.”

    Decades of progress on the line

    Karma Quick-Panwala, an advocate at the nonprofit Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, said she worries about the rollback of decades’ worth of progress that was hard-won by the disability rights community. 

    The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the 1975 law that created special education, actually predates the federal Department of Education. In fact, Congress created the department in part to oversee special education. Removing special ed would be a devastating blow to the disability community — not just because services might be curtailed, but philosophically, as well, Quick-Panwala said. 

    In the Department of Education, special education is under the purview of education experts who promote optimal ways to educate students with disabilities, so they can learn, graduate from high school and ideally go on to productive lives. In the Department of Health and Human Services, special education would no longer be overseen by educators but by those in the medical field, where they’re more likely to “look at disability as something to be cured or segregated and set aside,” Quick-Panwala said.

    “The disability rights community has worked so hard and gave so much to make sure people with disabilities had a right to a meaningful education, so they could have gainful employment opportunities and participate in the world,” Quick-Panwala said. “The idea is that they wouldn’t just be present at school, but they would actually learn and thrive.”

    For the time being, Wright, Quick-Panwala and other advocates are reminding families that federal funding might be shrinking, but the laws remain unchanged. Students are still entitled under federal law to the services outlined in their individual education plans, regardless of whether there’s money to pay for it. The funding will have to come from somewhere, at least for now, even if that means cutting it from another program. And California is unlikely to roll back its own special education protections, regardless of what happens in Washington, D.C.

    An imperfect but successful routine

    Those reassurances are scant comfort to Crain, whose daughter Lena will rely on government support her entire life. Born seven weeks prematurely, Lena has cerebral palsy, epilepsy, a cognitive impairment and is on the deaf-blind spectrum. But she has a 100-watt smile and a relentless spirit, Crain said. Even after the whole family has been up all night, Lena insists on going to school and getting the most out of every day.

    From left, Jack Deacy, his daughter Lena Deacy, and Lindsay Crain at their home in Culver City on Dec. 1, 2025. The family fears potential Medicaid cuts because Lena, who has cerebral palsy, epilepsy and other medical conditions, relies on Medicaid-funded services for her daily care and well-being. Photo by Zaydee Sanchez for CalMatters

    Funny and assertive, she has a few close friends and, like many teenagers, plenty of opinions about her parents. She loves her English teacher and spends most of her day in regular classrooms with help from an aide. Her favorite book is about Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani activist who won a Nobel Peace Prize for fighting for girls’ right to an education.

    Between school and home visits from aides and after-school therapists, Crain feels the family has pieced together an imperfect but mostly successful routine for Lena.

    “Our entire lives are about teaching her self-advocacy, so she can have the most independent life possible,” Crain said. “Just because you need support doesn’t mean you can’t have a say in your life. There’s been so much work around the culture and the laws and the education system to make sure disabled people can make their own choices in life. We’re absolutely terrified of losing that.”

    This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.


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  • NYC’s iHOPE School Unlocks Learning for Profoundly Disabled Kids – The 74

    NYC’s iHOPE School Unlocks Learning for Profoundly Disabled Kids – The 74

    Sitting in his wheelchair at a highly specialized private school in Manhattan designed for students with severe and multiple disabilities, Joshua Omoloju, 17, uses assistive technology to activate his Spotify playlist, sharing snippets of his favorite songs in class — tracks even his parents were unaware he loved. 

    It’s a role this deejay is thrilled to fill at a school that encourages him to express himself any way he can. The magnetic and jovial Omoloju, a student at The International Academy of Hope, is legally blind, hearing impaired and nonverbal. But none of that stopped him from playing Peanut Butter Jelly Time by Buckwheat Boyz mid-lesson on a recent morning.

    “OK, Josh!” his teachers said, swiveling their hips and smiling. “Let’s go!”

    iHOPE, as it’s known, was established in Harlem in 2013 for just six children and moved to its current location blocks from Rockefeller Center in 2022. It now serves 150 students ages 5 through 21 and is currently at capacity with 27 people on its waitlist, according to its principal. 

    The four-story, nonprofit school offers age-appropriate academics alongside physical, occupational and speech therapy in addition to vision and hearing services. Every student at iHOPE has a full-time paraprofessional, who works with them throughout the day, and at least half participate in aquatic therapy in a heated cellar pool. 

    The school has three gymnasiums fitted with equipment to increase students’ mobility, helping many walk or stand, something they rarely do because of their physical limitations. 

    Arya Venezio, 12, with physical therapist Kendra Andrada (Heather Willensky)
    Edward Loakman, 18, with physical therapist Navneet Kaur (Heather Willensky)
    Gabriel Torres, 15, with physical therapist Jeargian Decangchon and his one-to-one nurse, Guettie Louis. (Heather Willensky)

    Its 300-member staff includes four full-time nurses and its six-figure cost averages $200,000 annually depending on each child’s needs. Parents can seek tuition reimbursement from the New York City Department of Education through legal processes set out by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, arguing that the public school cannot adequately meet their child’s needs.   

    iHOPE focused primarily on rehabilitation in its early years but is now centered on academics and assistive technology, particularly augmentative and alternative communication devices that improve students’ access to learning. Mastery means users can take greater control of their lives. Shani Chill, the school’s principal and executive director, said working at iHOPE allows her to witness this transformational magic each day.

    “Every student who comes here is a gift that is locked away inside and the staff come together to figure that out, saying, ‘I can give you this device, this tool, these tactiles’ and suddenly the student breaks through and shows us something amazing about themselves,” she said. “You see their personality, their humor, and the true wisdom that comes from students who would otherwise be sitting there in a wheelchair with everything being done for them — or to them.” 

    Aron Mastrangelo, 5, with his occupational therapist, Rose Siciliano, to his left and and his paraprofessional, Emely Ayala, to his right. (Heather Willensky)

    Some devices, like the one Omoloju uses in his impromptu deejay booth, track students’ pupils, allowing them to answer questions and express, for example, joy or discomfort, prompting staff to make needed modifications. 

    Because he’s unable to speak, Omoloju’s parents, teachers and friends assess his mood through other means, including his laughter, which arrives with ease and frequency at iHOPE. It’s a welcome contrast to what came before it at a different school, when a sudden eruption of tears would prompt a call to his mother, who would rush down to the campus, often too late to glean what upset him. 

    “One of the things we saw when we first visited (iHOPE) was that they knew exactly how to work with him,” Terra Omoloju said earlier this week. “That was so impressive to me. I don’t feel anxious anymore about getting those calls.”

    Yosef Travis, father to 8-year-old Juliette, said iHOPE embodies the idea that children with multiple disabilities and complex syndromes can grow with the right support. 

    Juliette has a rare genetic disorder that impacts brain development and is also visually impaired. She squeals with joy with one-on-one attention and often taps her feet in excitement, Chill said. 

    “Juliette has grown in leaps and bounds over the past three and a half years and the dedication and creativity of the staff played a significant role,” her father said. “When she is out sick or on school vacation, we can tell that she misses them.”

    Travis said his family considered many options, both public and private, before choosing iHOPE.

    “iHOPE was the only one that could provide a sound education without sacrificing the necessary supports and related services she needs for her educational journey,” he said. 

    iHOPE currently serves one child from Westchester but all the others are from New York City. Parents are not referred there by their local district: They learn about it from social workers, therapists, doctors or through their own research, the principal said. 

    Those seeking enrollment complete an intake process to ensure their child would be adequately served there. Parents typically make partial payments or deposits upfront — the amount varies depending on income — while seeking tuition reimbursement from the NYC DOE. 

    iHOPE does not receive state or federal funding but some organizations that aid its students saw their budgets slashed by the Trump administration, reducing the amount of support they can provide to families in the form of services and equipment. 

    You can have classrooms that feel like a babysitting facility with kids in wheelchairs given colored paper and crayons, which makes no sense. Or you have a place like iHOPE, which takes advantage of the age in which we are.

    Shani Chill, iHope principal and executive director

    Principal Chill said her school is devoted to giving children the tools they need, even if it means absorbing added costs. 

    “We’ll get it from somewhere,” she said, noting iHOPE can turn to partner organization YAI and to its own fundraising efforts to pay those expenses so that every child, no matter their challenges, can learn. 

    ‘He knows he is in the right place’

    Omoloju’ symptoms mimic cerebral palsy and he also has scoliosis. He’s prone to viruses and other ailments, is frequently hospitalized and has undergone surgeries for his hip and back. 

    “He is also very charming,” his mother said. “He likes to have fun. He loves people. I feel very blessed that he is so joyous — even when he’s sick. He is very resilient. I love that about him. He teaches me so much.” 

    Joshua Omoloju’s parents said their son is a happy young man who loves his school. (Nicole Chase)

    This is Omoloju’s fourth year at iHOPE. He’s in the upper school program — iHOPE does not use grade levels — which serves students ages 14 through 21. 

    He has made marked improvements in his mobility and communication since his enrollment. And his parents know he loves it there: Josh’s father, Wale, saw that firsthand after he dropped his son off at campus after a recent off-site appointment.

    “I wish I had a video for when Keith [his son’s paraprofessional] came out of the elevator,” his father said. “[Josh] was beside himself laughing and was so excited to see him. He absolutely loves being there. I know he is in the right place and we love that.”

    Principal Chill notes many of these students would not have been placed in an academic setting in decades past. Instead, she said, they would have been institutionalized, a cruel loss for them, their families and the greater community. 

    “These kids deserve an education and what that looks like runs the spectrum,” she said. “You can have classrooms that feel like a babysitting facility with kids in wheelchairs given colored paper and crayons, which makes no sense. Or you have a place like iHOPE, which takes advantage of the age in which we are.”

    Chill notes that assistive and communication-related devices have improved dramatically in recent years and are only expected to develop further. She’s not sure how AI might transform their lives moving forward, but highly sensitive devices that can be operated with a glance or a light touch could be life changing, for example, allowing students to activate smart devices in their own living space.

    Benjamin Van den Bergh, 6, with paraprofessional Mirelvys Rodriguez (Heather Willensky)

    “This is a great time when you look at all of the technology that is available,” she said. 

    ‘Moved to tears’

    Miriam Franco was thrilled about the progress her son, Kevin Carmona, 16, made in just his first six months at iHOPE, she said. 

    Kevin, a high-energy student who thrives on praise from his teachers, is also good at listening: Ever curious, he’ll keep pace with a conversation from across the room if it interests him. 

    Kevin has cerebral palsy and a rare genetic disorder that affects the brain and immune system. He has seizures, hip dysplasia and is fed with a gastronomy tube. 

    “He was able to receive a communication device, which opened an entirely new world for him and allowed him to express himself in ways he could not before,” his mother said. “He also became more engaged and independent during his physical therapy and occupational therapy sessions. His attention and focus improved when completing tasks or responding to prompts, leading to greater engagement and participation.”

    His enthusiasm for the school shows itself each morning, Franco said.

    “You can see how happy he is while waiting for the bus and greeting his travel paraprofessional,” she said. “It starts from the moment he wakes up and continues as he gets ready for school. In every part of his current educational setting, Kevin is given real opportunities to participate, with the support in place to make that possible.” 

    Principal Chill said she cherishes the moment parents visit the site for the first time, imagining all their child is capable of achieving. 

    “They  are moved to tears, saying, ‘Now I can picture what my child can do someday,” she said.


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  • Modernizing the special education workforce is a national imperative

    Modernizing the special education workforce is a national imperative

    Key points:

    America’s special education system is facing a slow-motion collapse. Nearly 8 million students now receive services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), but the number of qualified teachers and related service providers continues to shrink. Districts from California to Maine report the same story: unfilled positions, overworked staff, and students missing the services they’re legally entitled to receive.

    “The promise of IDEA means little if there’s no one left to deliver it.”

    The data tell a clear story. Since 2013, the number of children ages 3–21 served under IDEA has grown from 6.4 million to roughly 7.5 million. Yet the teacher pipeline has moved in the opposite direction. According to Title II reports, teacher-preparation enrollments dropped 6 percent over the last decade and program completions plunged 27 percent. At the same time, nearly half of special educators leave the field within their first five years.

    By 2023, 45 percent of public schools were operating without a full teaching staff. Vacancies were most acute in special education. Attrition, burnout, and early retirements outpace new entrants by a wide margin.

    Why the traditional model no longer works

    For decades, schools and staffing firms have fought over the same dwindling pool of licensed providers. Recruiting cycles stretch for months, while students wait for evaluations, therapies, or IEP services.

    Traditional staffing firms focus on long-term contracts lasting six months or more, which makes sense for stability, but ignores an enormous, untapped workforce: thousands of credentialed professionals who could contribute a few extra hours each week if the system made it easy.

    Meanwhile, the process of credentialing, vetting, and matching candidates remains slow and manual, reliant on spreadsheets, email, and recruiters juggling dozens of openings. The result is predictable: delayed assessments, compliance risk, and burned-out staff covering for unfilled roles.

    “Districts and recruiters compete for the same people, when they could be expanding the pool instead.”

    The hidden workforce hiding in plain sight

    Across the country, tens of thousands of licensed professionals–speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, school psychologists, special educators–are under-employed. Many have stepped back from full-time work to care for families or pursue private practice. Others left the classroom but still want to contribute.

    Imagine if districts could tap those “extra hours” through a vetted, AI-powered marketplace. A system that matched real-time school requests with qualified providers in their state. A model like this wouldn’t replace full-time roles; it would expand capacity, reduce burnout, and bring talent back into the system.

    This isn’t theoretical. The same “on-demand” concept has already modernized industries from medicine to media. Education is long overdue for the same reinvention.

    What modernization looks like

    1. AI-driven matching: Districts post specific service needs (evaluations, IEP meetings, therapy hours). Licensed providers choose opportunities that fit their schedule.
    2. Verified credentials and provider profiles: Platforms integrate state licensure databases and background checks to ensure compliance and provide profiles with all candidate information including on-demand, video interviews so schools can make informed hiring decisions immediately.
    3. Smart staffing metrics: Schools track fill-rates, provider utilization, and service delays in real time.
    4. Integrated workflows: The system plugs into existing special education management tools. No new learning curve for administrators.

    A moment of urgency

    The shortage isn’t just inconvenient; it’s systemic. Each unfilled position represents students who lose therapy hours, districts risking due-process complaints, and educators pushed closer to burnout.

    With IDEA students now representing nearly 15 percent of all public school enrollment, the nation can’t afford to let a twentieth-century staffing model dictate twenty-first-century outcomes.

    We have the technology. We have the workforce. What we need is the will to connect them.

    “Modernizing special education staffing isn’t innovation for innovation’s sake, it’s survival.”

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  • Supporting neurodiverse learners requires more than accommodation: It demands systemic change

    Supporting neurodiverse learners requires more than accommodation: It demands systemic change

    Key points:

    Approximately 1 in 5 children in the United States are estimated to be neurodivergent, representing a spectrum of learning and thinking differences such as autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and more. These children experience the world in unique and valuable ways, but too often, our education systems fail to recognize or nurture their potential. In an already challenging educational landscape, where studies show a growing lack of school readiness nationwide, it is more important than ever to ensure that neurodivergent young learners receive the resources and support they need to succeed.

    Early support and intervention

    As President and CEO of Collaborative for Children, I have personally seen the impact that high-quality early childhood education can have on a child’s trajectory. Birth to age five is the most critical window for brain development, laying the foundation for lifelong learning, behavior, and health. However, many children are entering their academic years without the basic skills needed to flourish. For neurodivergent children, who often need tailored approaches to learning, the gap is even wider.

    Research indicates that early intervention, initiated within the first three years of life, can significantly enhance outcomes for neurodivergent children. Children who receive individualized support are more likely to develop stronger language, problem-solving, and social skills. These gains not only help in the classroom but can also lead to higher self-confidence, better relationships and improved well-being into adulthood.

    The Collaborative for Children difference

    Collaborative for Children in Houston focuses on early childhood education and is committed to creating inclusive environments where all children can thrive. In Houston, we have established 125 Centers of Excellence within our early childhood learning network. The Centers of Excellence program helps child care providers deliver high-quality early education that prepares children for kindergarten and beyond. Unlike drop-in daycare, our certified early childhood education model focuses on long-term development, combining research-backed curriculum, business support and family engagement.

    This year, we are expanding our efforts by providing enhanced training to center staff and classroom teachers, equipping them with effective strategies to support neurodivergent learners. These efforts will focus on implementing practical, evidence-based approaches that make a real difference.

    Actionable strategies

    As educators and leaders, we need to reimagine how learning environments are designed and delivered. Among the most effective actionable strategies are:

    • Creating sensory-friendly classrooms that reduce environmental stressors like noise, lighting, and clutter to help children stay calm and focused.
    • Offering flexible learning formats to meet a range of communication, motor, and cognitive styles, including visual aids, movement-based activities, and assistive technology.
    • Training teachers to recognize and respond to diverse behaviors with empathy and without stigma, so that what is often misinterpreted as “disruption” is instead seen as a signal of unmet needs.
    • Partnering with families to create support plans tailored to each child’s strengths and challenges to ensure continuity between home and classroom.
    • Incorporating play-based learning that promotes executive functioning, creativity, and social-emotional development, especially for children who struggle in more traditional formats.

    Benefits of inclusive early education

    Investing in inclusive, high-quality early education has meaningful benefits not only for neurodivergent children, but for other students, educators, families and the broader community. Research indicates that neurotypical students who learn alongside neurodivergent peers develop critical social-emotional skills such as patience, compassion and acceptance. Training in inclusive practices can help educators gain the confidence and tools needed to effectively support a wide range of learning styles and behaviors as well as foster a more responsive learning environment.

    Prioritizing inclusive early education can also create strong bonds between families and schools. These partnerships empower caregivers to play an active role in their child’s development, helping them navigate challenges and access critical resources early on. Having this type of support can be transformative for families by reducing feelings of isolation and reinforcing that their child is seen, valued, and supported.

    The benefits of inclusive early education extend far beyond the classroom. When neurodivergent children receive the support they need early in life, it lays the groundwork for increased workforce readiness. Long-term economic gains can include higher employment rates and greater earning potential for individuals. 

    Early childhood education must evolve to meet the needs of neurodivergent learners. We cannot afford to overlook the importance of early intervention and tailored learning environments. If we are serious about improving outcomes for all children, we must act now and commit to inclusivity as a core pillar of our approach. When we support all children early, everyone benefits.

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  • A virtual reality, AI-boosted system helps students with autism improve social skills

    A virtual reality, AI-boosted system helps students with autism improve social skills

    Key points:

    This article and the accompanying image originally appeared on the KU News site and are reposted here with permission.

    For more than a decade, University of Kansas researchers have been developing a virtual reality system to help students with disabilities, especially those with autism spectrum disorder, to learn, practice and improve social skills they need in a typical school day. Now, the KU research team has secured funding to add artificial intelligence components to the system to give those students an extended reality, or XR, experience to sharpen social interactions in a more natural setting.

    The U.S. Office of Special Education Programs has awarded a five-year, $2.5 million grant to researchers within KU’s School of Education & Human Sciences to develop Increasing Knowledge and Natural Opportunities With Social Emotional Competence, or iKNOW. The system will build on previous work and provide students and teachers with an immersive, authentic experience blending extended reality and real-world elements of artificial intelligence.

    iKNOW will expand the capabilities of VOISS, Virtual reality Opportunity to Integrate Social Skills, a KU-developed VR system that has proven successful and statistically valid in helping students with disabilities improve social skills. That system contains 140 unique learning scenarios meant to teach knowledge and understanding of 183 social skills in virtual school environments such as a classroom, hallway, cafeteria or bus that students and teachers can use via multiple platforms such as iPad, Chromebooks or Oculus VR headsets. The system also helps students use social skills such as receptive or expressive communication across multiple environments, not simply in the isolation of a classroom.

    IKNOW will combine the VR aspects of VOISS with AI features such as large language models to enhance the systems’ capabilities and allow more natural interactions than listening to prerecorded narratives and responding by pushing buttons. The new system will allow user-initiated speaking responses that can accurately transcribe spoken language in real-time. AI technology of iKNOW will also be able to generate appropriate video responses to avatars students interact with, audio analysis of user responses, integration of in-time images and graphics with instruction to boost students’ contextual understanding.

    “Avatars in iKNOW can have certain reactions and behaviors based on what we want them to do. They can model the practices we want students to see,” said Amber Rowland, assistant research professor in the Center for Research on Learning, part of KU’s Life Span Institute and one of the grant’s co principal investigators. “The system will harness AI to make sure students have more natural interactions and put them in the role of the ‘human in the loop’ by allowing them to speak, and it will respond like a normal conversation.”

    The spoken responses will not only be more natural and relatable to everyday situations, but the contextual understanding cues will help students better know why a certain response is preferred. Rowland said when students were presented with multiple choices in previous versions, they often would know which answer was correct but indicated that’s not how they would have responded in real life.

    IKNOW will also provide a real-time student progress monitoring system, telling them, educators and families how long students spoke, how frequently they spoke, number of keywords used, where students may have struggled in the system and other data to help enhance understanding.

    All avatar voices that iKNOW users encounter are provided by real middle school students, educators and administrators. This helps enhance the natural environment of the system without the shortcomings of students practicing social skills with classmates in supervised sessions. For example, users do not have to worry what the people they are practicing with are thinking about them while they are learning. They can practice the social skills that they need until they are comfortable moving from the XR environment to real life.

    “It will leverage our ability to take something off of teachers’ plates and provide tools for students to learn these skills in multiple environments. Right now, the closest we can come to that is training peers. But that puts students with disabilities in a different box by saying, ‘You don’t know how to do this,’” said Maggie Mosher, assistant research professor in KU’s Achievement & Assessment Institute, a co-principal investigator for the grant.

    Mosher, a KU graduate who completed her doctoral dissertation comparing VOISS to other social skills interventions, found the system was statistically significant and valid in improving social skills and knowledge across multiple domains. Her study, which also found the system to be acceptable, appropriate and feasible, was published in high-impact journals Computers & Education and Issues and Trends in Learning Technologies.

    The grant supporting iKNOW is one of four OSEP Innovation and Development grants intended to spur innovation in educational technology. The research team, including principal investigator Sean Smith, professor of special education; Amber Rowland, associate research professor in the Center for Research on Learning and the Achievement & Assessment Institute; Maggie Mosher, assistant research professor in AAI; and Bruce Frey, professor in educational psychology, will present their work on the project at the annual I/ITSEC conference, the world’s largest modeling, simulation and training event. It is sponsored by the National Training & Simulation Association, which promotes international and interdisciplinary cooperation within the fields of modeling and simulation, training, education and analysis and is affiliated with the National Defense Industrial Association.

    The research team has implemented VOISS, available on the Apple Store and Google Play, at schools across the country. Anyone interested in learning more can find information, demonstrations and videos at the iKNOW site and can contact developers to use the system at the site’s “work with us” page.

    IKNOW will add resources for teachers and families who want to implement the system at a website called iKNOW TOOLS (Teaching Occasions and Opportunities for Learning Supports) to support generalization of social skills across real-world settings.

    “By combining our research-based social emotional virtual reality work (VOISS) with the increasing power and flexibility of AI, iKNOW will further personalize the learning experience for individuals with disabilities along with the struggling classmates,” Smith said. “Our hope and expectation is that iKNOW will further engage students to develop the essential social emotional skills to then apply in the real world to improve their overall learning outcomes.”

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