White House/VA Conference Emerging Technologies in Support of the New Freedom Initiative: Promoting Opportunities for People with Disabilities October 13-14, 2004

“The middle is where we´re losing children with disabilities. They´re dropping out. The dropout rates have never been higher for kids who reach the age of 16 and who are enrolled in special needs education.”—Susan Parker, Director of Policy and Research, Office of Disability Employment Policy

The Workforce/Education breakout report was presented by Susan Parker, Chief, Director of Policy and Research, Office of Disability Employment Policy, Department of Labor

THE HONORABLE STEVEN J. TINGUS: I´d like to introduce my cochair, Susan Parker, and the facilitator, Dr. Margaret Campbell from the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR). For brevity of time and her expertise in the employment issues, I´m going to allow Susan to make the formal presentation of our findings from our breakout group. We have listed for you some key findings and comments that our group has developed. So with that, I turn it over to Susan Parker.

MS. SUSAN PARKER: Thank you very much, Steven. I´m very pleased to be here. I should tell you before I start out, and I won´t do any campaigning or platform advancements here for my own program, but I do belong to the U.S. Department of Labor. My organization is the Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP). It is the newest of the eleven agencies within the U.S. Department of Labor. Take note: The name of our conference is, “Emerging Technologies in Support of the New Freedom Initiative: Promoting Opportunities for People with Disabilities.” At the risk of being perhaps a bit too focused, I am going to confine my remarks to people with disabilities. But I know that I´m among friends, so it´s fine.

Thank you very much to the Veterans Administration for biting the bullet, as we say in New England, to put on a conference of this magnitude. We do conferences often in ODEP. I have no illusions what the time and what the sweat equity is in putting together an event. I also very much appreciate the diversity in this room. It is a rare opportunity for me, and I know for many others here, to hear the likes of the presenting panels and stars yesterday, all of whom are so very engaged in cutting edge research. Of course, this research all boils down to how it affects humankind. Wow. I can just say, hats off to you.

Also thanks to my colleague, Steven Tingus, for doing a fine job in the National Institute of Disability Rehabilitation and Research (NIDRR) for holding the flag, and his colleague, Margaret Campbell. It´s a lonely place sometimes in government with disability, and while we talk the talk, let´s remember Abraham Lincoln´s words. Let´s see if I can get it right in my haste. “The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but they won´t forget what they did here.”

We´re stewards. We talk a lot. It´s evident today. It was evident yesterday. We´ve all got good minds, and it´s really a God-given pleasure to think about how it is we can take what it is, the equity is, in our world of research and science and, through the government, and figure out how to execute the applications. So with that, let´s move on.

We had a disparate group. The task was to look at the topic of education and the workforce. Now, that´s a wee bit different than transportation, but we also in ODEP work on transportation as an employment support for people with disabilities. Everything we do, it´s like a diamond, many facets. But everything rolls back to how it is we look at people with disabilities and what can we do. We had numerous topics. The facilitative staff created five different segments. I´m only going to raise a couple of them.

Difficulties in workforce/education

• The labor and skills gap crisis.

We looked at the situations in special education and workforce development curricula. We looked at the disparity in the demographics in the next 6 to 12 years having to do with many more jobs, fewer people to fill them. People with disabilities need to be tuned up in a more pointed way in order to be able to fill the emerging jobs/skills gap. That´s how we say it in Labor, jobs and skills gap. What are the minimal skills or requirements for tomorrow´s workforce and how can people with disabilities acquire these skills?

• Engineering students aren´t exposed enough to the needs of people with disabilities.

A point we raised is that—and this came from one of the esteemed scientists in the group—few engineering students receive hands-on experience in making things work. It says it all, doesn´t it? The engineering students don´t have exposure to people with disabilities. But they have the desire. They have the sense of wanting to help other people. One of the people in the group raised the point that if there was research money that was sufficient or had the right earmarks or the right language attached to it, students, when given the choice, would want to get into research applications and development, for example, in robotics, to actually help people with disabilities. I think that´s illuminating, and I think it is a value that can form a strong strategy we can send to the White House. We need to catch students younger and introduce them to the myriad satisfactions that come from developing assistive technologies for the disabled.

• Special education curriculum lacks hands-on experiences.

The special education curriculum also needs to provide hands-on experience that contributes to mastery. Education is one thing, but providing very pointed experiences that contain learning opportunities from the point of view that people can partake of and can feel better about themselves and what it is they have to offer. We don´t do enough of that. Some key points were raised concerning students and training. Educational environments need to be reshaped to concentrate on bringing full educational packages to all children.

• Teacher training gets a C-minus.

Focus for a moment on the teacher training. If we´re going to address the employment workforce problem, we need to start young. We need to start with these kids when they´re in elementary school. It´s where the downward spiral into dependency has its start. We have to nip it in the bud, put the emphasis on teacher training that is positively reinforcing, but also at the administrative level in the special education hierarchies within state departments of education, we need to figure out how to put in maximum investment, banking on the best applications that science gives us, and learn how to translate those findings into use in the everyday classroom.

• Not enough bread-and-butter education strategies.

As one person on the team said, "we need to figure out these applications in a bread-and- butter way, not the sexy stuff that gets the big press headlines." The applications for special education and workforce training must broadly disseminate the strategies in a focused way within our educational preparation systems, elementary school, secondary schools, and postsecondary institutions.

• Too much focus on the elite.

By the by, we can´t focus on people that are going to the top schools in the country. We´ve got to focus on the middle. The middle is where we´re losing children with disabilities. They´re dropping out. The dropout rates have never been higher for kids who reach the age of 16 and who are enrolled in special needs education. Didn´t know that, did you? Outreach and early intervention are paramount. Get them early. Get them focused. Use your best teachers. I don´t think that's happening now. We must figure out how to get the best and the brightest teachers to work in special education. And we need to reach out to minority neighborhoods and to disadvantaged children, as well as develop programs that are culturally sensitive.

• Fear of losing benefits.

People with disabilities with Social Security disability status fear a reduction in benefits and loss of health care if they decide to join or rejoin the workforce. In fact, the way the system is set up now, it may be more advantageous—healthcare-wise—for a disabled person to stay on disability and not work.

• Lack of educational training.

Educational training for disabled youth and adults reentering the workplace is either virtually nonexistent or insufficient. Special education teaches also need to be trained in the use of assistive technologies in the classroom.

Strategies for successful workforce/education

• Identify the skills for the 21^st century workforce.

Education and the Department of Labor, not strange bedfellows here, need to come together to identify skills for the 21st century workforce. We need to turn this into a research project. We would do this by figuring out how to work with teachers, how to understand teaching in a more effective way these skills at earlier and earlier ages.

• Consider the extremes.

One way to get started in studying an issue is to look at the outlying areas, the people at either extreme of the standard deviation curve. Children with special needs who are doing well—why are they doing well? Children with special needs who are not doing well—why? What are those characteristics that we don´t typically learn or describe? We need to draw from this information and apply it. It is not enough to have the thing sit on the shelf, but to actually apply it into curricula. Possibly we need to do social science retrospective studies of children that are doing well and not so well. We must make this a high priority—not in 2010, but in 2006.

• Reexamine existing research.

Where there is existing research, we need to do systematic reviews to see what is most feasible to implement as pilot interventions. I have a simpler way of saying that, and that is that I know the wealth in NIDRR´s research — I call it "the policy corpus that´s resting." Disability in America has enjoyed a huge amount of research resources. Possibly, it´s time to take a second, third, fourth look at what it is we already know and to make a pact among ourselves to not replicate, duplicate, or in any other way do what we´ve already done before. It´s always easier to do something new. It´s a little more rigorous, isn´t it, to take a look at what we already know and to define — it takes patience — through systematic examination where the niches are in knowledge gaps.

• Translation, translation.

Translation was a topic that came up because we know many things about specialties. I listened to the scientists and medical people. We know a great deal about highly technical situations, findings, and applications. We are less adept at taking those findings, and translating them into how a special education teacher in the first grade might benefit from them. Now, if special education teachers knew something like that and if they understood the value of positive reinforcement with regard to occupational therapy, they could integrate that finding into the classroom. We made the point that it´s very costly to do research on translation technology. What language do we need to use to bring it into the curricula? It´s on us to figure out how to talk to other people. We are the translators.

Solutions for workforce/education

• Create incentives for research on affordable technology.

We need to create incentives for the research on topics like affordable technology. That takes priority setting at the highest levels and an agreement that we need to do it. We must look at these applications for inclusion in the workplace and call it to the attention of the employers. And you don´t dictate to employers. You find friendly employers. You find IBM, for example, which we use a lot. And they often talk with other employers. But we call that, very complicatedly, apples talking to apples.

• Develop assistive technology techniques for workplace and school.

Although it is very costly to do, we need to perform research that will show us how to translate assistive technologies into educational settings and into the workplace.

• Reach out to high growth industries and small businesses.

We know about the high growth industries. What we don´t know as much about is how people with disabilities can contribute to the workplace in these high growth industries, each with their own sets of unique skills. Also, the majority of America is not made up of large corporations. The fastest growing segment in the world of employment is the small business, defined here as 250 employees and fewer. That´s where we need to be going to see about training and retention of employees with disabilities.

• Promote distance learning.

Technology has opened up huge areas for us in the area of distance learning. How effective is it? What do we need to do to bring together greater awareness of what´s possible? And it really does come down to what's possible.

• Establish preferences for end–users.

We must ask the end users of technologies what are their needs and preferences. What are the preferences—and that means choices—of children, youth, reentry workers, and teachers. All of these people are both the users and the implementers. Let´s not forget to ask the employers what assistive devices and methods of workplace support make a person a better employee? This links the outcome directly back to workplace productivity. We also need to poll educators on how to train engineers from a universal design perspective. And to ask educators and providers what methods are most effective for training teachers.

• Eliminate roadblocks.

No discussion in Washington would be complete if we didn´t discuss roadblocks because, after all, we´re here from the government and we´re here to help, aren´t we? Roadblocks in interagency collaborations need to be knocked down. Interagency collaboration, thanks to good people who are implementing the New Freedom Initiative, is not just lip service. It´s real.

How is it real? You can look at Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Office of Disability and see the crossover with how they service the issues with regard to children with what we call complex needs. Many children with complex needs are being kept alive because of the advances in the technology that the wonderful people here in the world of science have created. We have other issues in implementation in policy that must be responsive to these children with complex needs. It´s a health issue, yes. It´s an education issue. It´s a training set of issues as far as skill-building. It´s a parent support issue. It´s an economic issue. It´s a burden on the family issue. And, on the other hand, it can even be a spiritual issue. All of those facets have to be woven into approaches, and the way to create visibility is for the agencies, the executive branch agencies, to come together. I was in government during the first Bush administration, left in 1993, worked internationally for 10 years, came back, been here about 2 years now. And I can tell you the degree of interagency collaboration that I see now did not exist in the fullness and the richness and the genuineness that it does now. It didn´t exist in anything from ‘89 to ‘93.But now people are very much more together, and I do believe we can credit the New Freedom Initiative for that.

• Get rid of disincentives to work.

On the sort of negative side, we must tackle disincentives to work, loss of benefits for people with disabilities. In the disability community, there is an enormous fear of reduction in benefits — health insurance, mainly — if a person goes off Social Security disability status and begins working. A huge disincentive exists for people with disabilities who are in the workforce and, for whatever reason, are getting out — maybe it´s a late acquisition on a disability — or for people on the outside seeking to get in.

Fear of no healthcare coverage is a huge driver. Understandable, logical. I will tell you, even the Social Security Administration understands this. We must give people with disabilities incentives to work and employers must provide healthcare that is comparable to what was received prior to joining or rejoining the workforce. Healthcare is especially important to people with disabilities, as you can imagine, and their needs and fears must be addressed.

Workforce Education Breakout Group Members
Mindy Aisen, MD, Director, Rehab R&D Service, Office of Research & Development VA	Paul Aisen, MD, Professor of Neurology Georgetown University Medical Center	Nell Bailey, Director, Technical Assistance Project RESNA
Roxanna M. Bendixen, MHS, OTR/L, Research Assistant, Rehabilitation Science Doctoral Program University of Florida	Tricia Brooks, Director of Government Relations The Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation	Margaret Campbell, PhD,* Program Specialist, NIDRR
Dr. Dean Cole, Medical Services Division Department of Energy	Rory A. Cooper, PhD, Pittsburgh VAMC VA	Gilbert Devey, Program Director, Biomedical Engineering/Research to Aid Persons with Disabilties National Science Foundation
John P. Donoghue, PhD, Professor of Neuroscience Brown University	Patricia Dorn, PhD, Deputy Director, Rehab R&D VA	Alberto Esquenazi, MD, Director, Gait and Motion Analysis Laboratory Albert Einstein Medical Center
Ephraim P. Glinert, PhD, Program Director, Human-Computer Interaction and Universal Access National Science Foundation	Leslie Gonzalez-Rothi, PhD, Research Health Scientist, Gainesville VAMC VA	Bert Harman, President and CEO Otto Bock Health Care
Frederick D. Isler, Federal Highway Administration DOT	Christopher Jacobs, PhD, Associate Director, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Palo Alto VAMC VA	Glenn Klute, PhD, Health Research Scientist, Seattle VAMC VA
Hermano Krebs, PhD, Principal Research Scientist & Lecturer, Mechanical Engineering Department MIT	LTC Geoff Ling, MD, PhD, Director Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)	Albert Lo, MD, Rehabilitation Researcher VA
Michael Manganiello, Senior Vice President The Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation	Mrs. Claude Mann, Co-CEO Advanced Bionics	Stephen E. Nadeau, MD, Research Health Scientist, VA
Susan Parker,† Director of Policy and Research, Office of Disability Employment Policy Labor	Anne Plant, PhD, Agency Representative, National Science & Technology Council OSTP	Peter Rzeszotarski, Deputy, PPE Team CDC
Joseph F. Rizzo, III, MD, Codirector, Retinal Implant Project, Boston VAMC, VA	Ronald A. Schuchard, PhD, Research Health Scientist, Atlanta VA Rehab R&D Center VA	Joseph Schulman, MD President and Chief Scientist Alfred E. Mann Foundation
	The Honorable Steven J. Tingus, ‡ Director, NIDRR Department of Education

*Session facilitator
†Session cochair
‡Session cochair

Main Page

>

Breakout Reports

>

Workforce/Education