The way its set up now, public schools don’t adequately address anyone’s needs.
Assuming you don’t get unlimited resources to educate every single unique snowflake to reach their best possible potential?
I’d target the middle 95% of the Bell Curve for school dollars - anyone needing services beyond the middle 95%, the dollars should be funded outside of the school system - medical insurance, social services, privately, scholarships. I say this as the parent of a gifted child.
Maybe, in doing that the 80% in the middle (probably skewing to the high end) MIGHT get their needs adequately met.
And yet, it’s the only country I know of (there may be others) which has a university where the working language is signed and which was originally founded for the deaf. On one hand this seems strangely exclusive; on the other, it comes from someone deciding that the deaf needed to get access to tertiary education at a time when most other countries hadn’t even realized they could get through primary (many still haven’t).
A lot of these things, in any country, are done a way or another “for historical reasons” which come down to “it was the best thing we could think of at the time”.
Spain prefers integrated schools but also has some specific ones; a kid who is unable to attend school for medical reasons gets waived from educational requirements. The school my nephew attends uses students to assist their classmates; he’s currently the helper of a classmate who’s two years older (he spent several years getting a lot of medical treatments), and who will some day be counted as “graduated compulsory education at age 18” but also as “graduated compulsory education in the expected time”, assuming he goes on normally from now on. The classmate also happens to be hard of hearing, which is why he gets a helper.
Lynn, YES! THIS! And in addition there’s no way in hell that the kid will ever visably benefit from the resources. I’m not being a Republican ( ie "stupid sped kids. Most sped kids can get at least functional academic abilty)
Like you could just park the kid in one of those Sensory Rooms all day…
But instead they have parents who scream about how they need “best of the best” stuff, and they usually require all sorts of supports and things.
Asian countries like China, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, etc have a pretty hardcore “up or out” philosophy to kids starting no later than the first grade. You either lead the class by 6 or 7, and stay at the top of the pack, or you get managed out.
My daughter may never be able to be unsupervised. I do know however that having good resources at school, Cadillac private insurance subsidized ABA therapy and loving home environment gives her a chance.
We as a country should be investing more into education to meet all needs. Full stop. Instead of worrying about the hypothetical inflation boogeyman and solving the deficit right now.
There are some children who are considered “uneducable” but “trainable.” All of the austic children for Nashville schools were just across the hall from my classroom. Their abilities differed greatly. Some are very bright and educable. Some were taught to deliver papers to the classroom and others might spend months learning to make a bed. Every child deserves a chance. You can’t tell by just looking at them. If teachers are willing to wipe their bottoms, surely others can be patient enough and giving enough to allow them to learn what they can.
and again ChinaGuy and Zoe, I wasn’t even talking about “affected but still somewhat functional” kids. Those kids can pick up on skills and may be in sheltered workshops or even day programs.
I am talking about the extreme profound kids, who cannot even smile or may not even know who a particular person is.
I think I want to know more about how rare it is before I get too worked up about it, to be honest. Are we talking 10 kids nationwide? 100? 10,000? What percentage of the general education fund are they taking up? Do they/ should they get funding from other sources, like medical insurance, for the medical needs attended to in school? Do (some of? all of? none of?) the funds used to make education accessible for these kids benefit other students or staff? Say, needing to put in elevators or wheelchair restrooms - that benefits everyone who breaks a leg and uses that resource on a temporary basis. So it’s expensive, and might not have happened without the need to accommodate, but it benefits more than just the permanently disabled. Do teachers get continuing education or special certificates to teach these kids, and then use or adapt that new knowledge to better benefit the rest of their students?
If the absolute numbers are small, or the percentage is small, then I can find the compassion not to be too bothered by it. I just don’t know enough about the issue to really have an informed opinion, but I do have lots of questions.
Okay, 2-3% of people have an intellectual disability. Of that 2-3%, 98-99% of them are in the mild to severe range, and all of those people are going to be able to learn some things, so that leaves 1-2% in the profound range, which is the sort of person the OP means, and only some of those are under the 21ish year old cut off for public school.
Thanks! Do we have data about how many of those <1-2% have parents who choose to mainstream them in public schools, vs. homeschooling, unschooling or long term residential care (which is what we call “institutionalizing” now)?
Being in an institution is a completely different issue. People with severe disabilites who can’t learn don’t need to live in an institution any more than anyone else. That’s about where they live, not where they go to school.
The consesnsus is that people with disabilities should live in their communities, not big institutions. 14 states have already completely eliminated state institutions, and most of the rest are in the process of closing them.
Just FYI, the terms “educable” and “trainable” are out of date. They aren’t put into two neat little categories like that any more (nor are typical students for that matter).
You can’t judge what a kid needs or can learn unless you know the details of his Individualized Education Plan. Which you don’t, unless the parents share it with you, because they are private. So you can’t assume that a kid is “wasting” resources.
Keep in mind that your child could become profoundly disabled at any time. He/she could get hit by a bus or whatever, God forbid. And you would have access to the same services, and you better believe you’d suddenly think they were a good idea.
Gracer, thanks for the interesting description of how they do it over there. That’s not much different from our system, though it varies from state to state and school system to school system.
By national law, children with special needs have a right to a public education. Sometimes that involves the public schools paying for private tuition at a special school, but usually they are in public schools. When there are extra needs the child has that the teacher doesn’t have time to deal with, they often hire an aide to help. Children often have special education teachers to teach certain subjects, part of the day or the entire day.
No, of course they aren’t. What’s happening is somebody is looking at some kids who can’t talk and have little motor ability and assuming they “can’t learn” without actually knowing anything about them.
Actually. I think that when you are spending ten times the amount you spend on an average student…and there are not enough books for average students, you can definately say we are wasting resources on one child at the expense of others.
I think people forget that it is even more costly to the State (my example is my home state of California) to institutionalize people with severe disabilities rather than try to integrate them into public schools and residential settings. This in turn, is a savings towards the state, which now has money freed up from one budget which would (and should) be available to cover for that disabled child in a public school setting. Here, money is earmarked separately for the Special Education budget in California. My guess is that other states do something similar.
The real question is…what are the school districts actually doing with that money that is allotted for Special Education? I’ve seen some SE budgets shifted away from the disabled students and into general educaction funds to pay for general education materials/staffing. Some schools co-mingle the monies the way they see fit, others stick to the allotments.
In our county (San Bernardino), our school districts want disabled students so they can receive the attached/allotted budget that comes with the student. As parents of a moderate autistic son, we toured quite a few schools in our town to see how the money was allotted for SE kids by looking at classrooms, inquiring about staffing, aides, materials and inclusion programs that would work with our son’s IEP. Some schools failed miserably (the allotted money was not spent on SE students, but on GE students) and some were better at managing it. We picked a school that actually did the most for their SE class and the teacher was well regarded along with sufficient number of aides.
Maybe some of you see it as money wasted with what is being done now, when it was FAR more costly than what was done in the past had we continued on that path before the Lanternman Act in 1969, which led to the de-institutionalization of the state-ran facilities that were deplorable, yet expensive to operate. Some of the clients we serve in our day program did come from these institutions and they are enjoying more with what we have to offer at a fraction of the cost of being institutionalized.
Ah, but the problem is that you picked “ten” out of a hat, and maybe someday they’ll pick a smaller number and then YOUR kid will be the one who is getting wasted resources on. And even if it’s not because your kid is special ed, it could easily be that your kid is getting wasted money on band, or drama, or sports or whatever.
It sounds like you don’t actually have a special ed child so you’re only thinking about your self-interest, like most people. I can’t give people a conscience, but I can point out that you could have a special ed kid at any time too, even if you have a “normal” kid now. Children can get diseases or be in accidents that cause brain injury at any time. God forbid you have to be on the other end of that “wasted” money.
I’m not nessarily arguing for reinsisstutionization of severe/profound kids. Maybe we need to have a different funding stream for the education of those kids. Like maybe the funding for those kids needs to come from the Department of Developmental Services rather then Dept. of Education. Heck, maybe it should come from the budget of the Pro Life organizations! That in turn would fund day programs for those extreme profound/severe kids. They wouldn’t be locked in a room, but at the same time, they’d have a trained staff and be able to do some activities…It just really seems strange for them to be funded by the same department that pushes academics…know what I’m saying? Even mild MR kids (80%) can develop functional academic skills. Besides, I thought that MANY profound kids were and ARE in private pediatric nursing homes.
Or maybe she might actually know a lot of special ed kids. Look I WAS a special ed kid myself. A lot of them can and do develop functional academic abiltiies. Saying that SOME special ed kids seem to cost the system a lot of money (with not a lot to show for it) is not a slippery slope. It’s a FACT. I did encounter that attitude in the mainstream (Oh she’s just gonna end up on disability) and I have relatively mild issues. Many kids can be independent…BUT there’s still a few thousand that will basicly sit in a wheelchair not even knowing who their caretakers are.
But we can go down the slope on the other side, like this: there was a time when people said it was a waste of money to educate kids like YOU, with only mild special needs.
I doubt there are even a few thousand like that.
It’s extremely rare to send a kid to school who has almost no ability to perceive or has little brain function.