Abstract: All of special education, particularly that for students with emotional and behavioral disorders, faces pressures for nonidentification of disabilities. Special education must come to grips with four distractions from its central mission of providing effective special instruction. These include the issues of disproportionality (statistical over-representation of certain minority groups in special education), stigma, inclusion, and tiered instruction. Tiered instruction goes by a variety of names and acronyms and is most often referred to as multi-tiered system of supports or MTSS. Tiered instruction offers promise in many ways but does not solve any of special education’s inherent problems such as making subjective judgments about what students need, sorting, categorizing, and labeling students. Special education appears to have “taken its eyes off the ball”, the ball being its core purpose of providing effective instruction and teacher education. Effective instruction and teacher education are fundamentals without which special education will fail to achieve its mission.

 

Key words: core mission, education of students with disabilities, special educational needs, tiered education