Extra-special Education
Readers of last Sunday’s Chronicle were treated to an “expose” of lavish settlements parents have won in special education disputes with their school districts. Particularly egregious-sounding was the lead anecdote, the case of a San Mateo county student with learning disabilities who, despite being offered a program that included daily help from a special education teacher and an advocate to negotiate with teachers at his local public high school, ended up in a plush private boarding school in Maine that doesn’t even offer special education. His school district was eventually ordered to pay half the cost of the tuition after his parents took them to court (they had previously won tuition for the boy’s private middle school).
The article went on to offer quotes from a panoply of school district consultants and lawyers decrying the increasingly litigious and greedy special education parents who are robbing underfunded districts to secure lavish private school tuitions, dolphin therapy and horseback riding for their children with disabilities.
Ah, yes, let’s demonize special education parents as welfare queens, sponging off the rest of us and laughing all the way to the bank in their tricked out Cadillacs. Let’s ignore the fact that a 2000 report from the National Council on Disability found that, 25 years after the passage of the landmark legislation that guides special education, all 50 states were out of compliance with some aspect of the law.
What was missing from the Chronicle’s two full pages on this topic was a balancing perspective from the vast majority of special education parents, teachers and administrators who are frustrated with Congress and the state legislatures’ failure to fully fund the services mandated under the law. What was missing was a look at the many desperate tactics school districts use to try and make ends meet: stonewalling, intimidation, outright misinformation and offering children programs that have been designed to provide services with the lowest possible cost instead of the highest possible quality. Finally, what was missing was the undisputed point that parents provide the only enforcement of special education legislation, through taking districts to court when they fail to provide the appropriate, individualized and “least restricted” educational programs that are required by the law. Perhaps a tiny minority of these parents have overreached, but most are simply trying to get their school districts to meet basic standards in educating children with all manner of disabilities. Why didn’t we hear from any of them?
The article went on to offer quotes from a panoply of school district consultants and lawyers decrying the increasingly litigious and greedy special education parents who are robbing underfunded districts to secure lavish private school tuitions, dolphin therapy and horseback riding for their children with disabilities.
Ah, yes, let’s demonize special education parents as welfare queens, sponging off the rest of us and laughing all the way to the bank in their tricked out Cadillacs. Let’s ignore the fact that a 2000 report from the National Council on Disability found that, 25 years after the passage of the landmark legislation that guides special education, all 50 states were out of compliance with some aspect of the law.
What was missing from the Chronicle’s two full pages on this topic was a balancing perspective from the vast majority of special education parents, teachers and administrators who are frustrated with Congress and the state legislatures’ failure to fully fund the services mandated under the law. What was missing was a look at the many desperate tactics school districts use to try and make ends meet: stonewalling, intimidation, outright misinformation and offering children programs that have been designed to provide services with the lowest possible cost instead of the highest possible quality. Finally, what was missing was the undisputed point that parents provide the only enforcement of special education legislation, through taking districts to court when they fail to provide the appropriate, individualized and “least restricted” educational programs that are required by the law. Perhaps a tiny minority of these parents have overreached, but most are simply trying to get their school districts to meet basic standards in educating children with all manner of disabilities. Why didn’t we hear from any of them?
3 Comments:
Excellent points–thanks for adding another perspective!
At least it was better than an article entitled, "All's Fine In The World Of SPEd".
I read the newspaper article to which you are referring and am disturbed by the amount of taxpayer money involved in sending someone to school in Maine. Nevertheless if everyone did that either every school district would go bankrupt or we would see major changes in how special education works. I have a thirteen year old in special education and the program is a joke.
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