Free means the parents don’t have to pick up the bill.
Public means the public educational system is responsible for it.
Appropriate means – well, at some point it may end up meaning what a judge decides it means.
And when all the negotitions have failed, and the case has been tried, and appealed all the way up as far as the school district can appeal it and the school district can’t provide the “appropriate” education but has to contract with someone else, and the bill comes in, then the court points at the school district and says “the law says, you pay.”
And if that seems drastic, it probably seemed drastic to parents before 1975, when their public schools told them “we can’t teach your child. We recommend you institutionalize him/her.”
Really good question. I’m a product of the special ed system myself. I’m hard of hearing with multiple issues (including learning disabilites) as well as being gifted.
I think in general, that the system does not adquadtly educate sped kids. There’s an attitude that all sped kids are just dumbass slacker types, who aren’t trying hard enough, or who are very apathetic to learning. While that might be true in SOME cases, a lot of sped kids are being underserved. Like a lot of times all we get are very very minmal accomondations. Public education is very “one size fits all” I can remember in school, ALL they gave me was basicly preferential seating, FM device/ auditory trainer, and speech, and time in the resource room. They didn’t even get me a notetaker until 1/2 way through high school, and that was only b/c my hypotonia (low muscle tone, inhibiting my fine motor skills was rediscovered. I had to use all the energy on “funcutioning like a regular person” …however in college, when I got C-Print I made Dean’s List! In severe cases…that’s really hard to say. I mean I think that there are sped kids that can only respond to very specialized teaching. There are even MILD cases that only respond to very specialized teaching. I mean there’s a reason why there are still private academies for kids with relatively mild things like learning disabilites, behavorial issues , Asperger’s syndrome and so on… Not everyone belongs at the neighborhood school.Not even the kids who can function academicly… As a matter of fact, there was this kid I went to college with. He had VERY profound Asperger’s Syndrome. Like he was smart. But, he had absolutly no social skills whatsoever. He’d follow people around campus, (he used to follow my friend OB) he would inappropreately walk in and out of people’s rooms, he walked in on his RA once, when she was changing, he would walk around and out of nowhere start talking about the skin on his arms being streachy. From what I understood, he’d been mainstreamed his entire life. But b/c his social defict were so severe he should have been shipped to a place where they knew how to treat Asperger’s.
Thank you for the responses! It sure is a complex issue, and it may often be very hard to know where to draw the line for ‘unteachable’ - at least in terms of formal schooling vs life skills.
I’m definitely inclined to think that $130k could be better spent. I’d be fairly astonished if you couldn’t get a live-in assistant to help with the child in the OP’s story for less than that kind of money … but I can at least see now why it’s a (probably) valid request in the first place.
FelixKat930, your story is very interesting and it’s great to see a real ‘good news’ story come out of this topic! It’s a shame that the school system wasn’t more interested in helping compensate for your difficulties - or didn’t have the funding/resources available to do so - but it’s just *fantastic *that you’ve managed to overcome that and even pass college. (Dean’s List, no less!)
Thank you very much for your input, everyone. I’m finding this thread very enlightening.
Yeah, “spun”. Because the hypothetical you posed has no bearing on reality at all. Well, except for students growing ever more obese, which is due to a combination of factors, one of which, as tomndebb points out, is the paucity of actual phys ed classes, not to mention the amount of crap available to students in vending machines and the general lack of physical activity that is a part of today’s society.
Honestly, I have yet to see anything that might be considered a dangerously unsafe track. Have you ever encountered anything of the sort?
And the already brilliant kids will become a net gain for society after they graduate college. Provided that the runner goes to college, there exists a whole track of study that will coddle him or her while there, and after graduation this runner will realize that he or she is not very well equipped for the real world, creating a net loss for society.
And Ruken: I’m not at all sure that I could maintain a thread about the inequities of school funding without launching into a rant. And breaking into profanity. And being caustic and snide. And those are things I just don’t do. Bad form and all like that.
And apropos of nothing inre this thread, I dig your SN, Autumn Almanac.
HBO had a special many moons ago about a special needs child placed in a regular class, and it sort of implied it was a good thing because the child got to be around regular kids, was made to feel normal, etc. But to me, the child was disruptive and disrupting the other kids, hitting them, biting them, etc., so you are causing the other 30 kids in the class to be disrupted to benefit one child. I feel this is wrong- a special needs child should only be in a normal class if he does not interfere with the learning of the others. Otherwise, he should be in a special class, with a teacher trained in handling special needs children.
You’re describing mainstreaming. And I, too, think that it is something that should be used only when in the best interests of all. I know damned little about the kid in the OP, but in my local district autistic kids are usually in a stand-alone situation. Frankly, if he smears feces then I would imagine he is stand-alone. At the very least he should be.
The process you described is as it should be. Children should be be professionally evaluated and placed. Federal financial help insures the cost is spread out to avoid crushing a small school district.
There is a financial limit to this process regardless of how it is codified. This is addressed indirectly through the vetting process described above. Hopefully the evaluation takes into account the needs of the other students involved.
On one hand, there are the special needs kids who, through diligent schooling, can be caught up to level, and go on to normal school. There are the ones who can be taught basic things, such as how to dress, tie shoes, etc… and who can support themselves as janitors, bag-boys, etc…
These people deserve the education- it actually accomplishes something.
Then there are the children who basically try to bang their heads on stuff all day long (apparently it’s called “stemming” or "stimming), and who really don’t progress. There are also children who will never be able to wipe themselves, talk, etc…
On the other hand, there are gifted/talented children. While many of them may be successful on their own, it seems kind of criminal to not enable them to be as successful as they can be. I mean, there may be another Stephen Jay Gould, or Alexander Fleming in one of those kids, and we may never know, because he’s “bored shitless” in his regular-ed science classes, and never takes an interest in them. Or worse, is unchallenged in school, is a discipline problem, and never really amounts to much.
Which is the greater crime? Not spending $135,000 to teach some kid how to wipe his ass, which is the best he’ll ever manage, or not helping a child who might come up with a cure for cancer, AIDS, etc…?
I think there probably needs to be some kind of triage in special education- there comes a point where despite what the parents think, the school district is throwing good money after bad, and should probably limit things.
The whole special ed system is screwed up. IDEA states that school districts must provide a free appropriate education for a child. The problem is how schools and parents come to decide what an “appropriate” education means. Schools have an incentive to provide the cheapest education possible, because any money spent on a special ed student isn’t being spent on other educational needs. If you have a person with severe disabilities in a school district, that person can divert enormous amounts of money from other students.
On the other hand, parents have an incentive to seek the best (and usually most expensive) type of education for their children. Generally, with more intensive attention by skilled teachers, a special needs child can do very well. This is especially true with autistic children. However, that type of intensive attention costs a lot of money. Parents are only doing what is natural to fight for this type of care for their children. Technically, the law is on their side.
The school has a lot of resources to fight against doing this type of care, though. They have more time (especially of the parents work), they can drag the meetings out for months, and they can tie up the process. Usually parents will give up and settle for substandard education for the child that does not cost as much as the best education possible.
The law sets up an adversarial system where no one really wins. Special ed kids usually get a crappy education, school districts are forced (at times) to pay hugely expensive bills for one or two children, and both parents and teachers are forced into situations where hours and hours are wasted going over paperwork and arguing with each other.
I say the only way to solve this is through a voucher program. Set up a statewide fund that also uses federal special ed dollars to provide vouchers to every special ed student. If local schools have the best services for that kid, then the parents can choose that school. If a private facility works best, then the kid can go there. This would give an incentive to facilities that provide the best facilities, which is something that is not being done today. It would also end the adversarial relationship between educators and parents.
Technically, the law permits this type of thing right now. If the best option for a special ed kid is to be educated at a private school, parents can force a school district to pay that child’s tuition. Let’s just revamp the system to allow all special ed kids (not just the ones with tenacious parents) to receive this type of service.
Careful you don’t hit anyone with that too-broad brush you’re using. Maybe the schools are trying to screw Special Ed where you are, but claiming that it’s universal is dishonest to say the very least.
Absolutely, which is why the school district will pick up the tab. The instance in the OP being the exception, of course.
Again, maybe the schools are out to screw the parents where you are, but you’re swinging that brush all over the damned place. Please stop it.
What a stupendously bad idea!
Y’mean the federal dollars that aren’t fully funded? Are those the ones you’re referring to? Because I wanna be sure that we’re on the same page.
Except for those who, like the family in the OP, couldn’t hope to make the nut established by the private school that they’re using. Not to mention travel to a private school that is elsewhere, room, board &c.
Hypersimplistic claptrap. And it would do nothing whatsoever to end any adversarial relationship between parents and educators. Are you naive enough to think that simply because their kid is going to a private school that parents are suddenly going to start whistling Zipp-ah-di-doo-dah out of their asses?
Well, we’ll have a better handle on it once the case alluded to in the OP has worked it’s way through the courts. And I’ve not encountered anything else that demonstrates parents’ willingness to (seemingly) abuse the system. As to revamping the system, it’s already doing what it’s designed for and supposed to do. Why do you want to screw with something that’s not broken? Won’t you think of the children?
Of course not every school does this. In fact, I’d say that in most cases they do not. However, when a parent gets pushy and starts demanding premiere service that will cost a school district a lot of money, it is in the school district’s interest to fight this. It makes perfect sense for them to do so, since they only have a finite amount of money to educate all students, and if they are spending $50,000 a year on one student, for instance, that cuts into the education of other students.
Well, there are a few different federal funding streams. I’m talking about IDEA dollars. And it’s a misnomer to say they are not “fully funded.” There is no such thing as fully funding for IDEA, regardless of what the NEA or AFT say. The legislation establishing IDEA says the feds can pay up to 40% of the average cost of educating a special ed student. It’s a limit, not a goal.
We can debate about how to design a voucher system, but there could easily be different amounts for vouchers dependent on the type and severity of disability. In that case, a more severely disabled child would receive more money.
The adversarial relationship mainly comes into play today when parents don’t feel their child is receiving a proper education and the parents have little power to force schools to offer that education. With a voucher, however, the parents would have the power to remedy this problem. They would simply take their money elsewhere.
No, we won’t. There are already plenty of parents who have their children educated at private school on the taxpayers’ dime due to IDEA. This case will set no precedent. The precedent is already decades old.
I have. I’ve talked to educators who are appalled at the abuse of the system on one hand and to parents who are appalled at educators who are abusing the system on the other. I talked to one school district that claimed a parent was screwing them over and I then talked to that parent who claimed the school district was screwing him over. And you know what? They were both right.
In many cases, that is true. However, in a small minority of cases it is seriously broken for both parents and the school system. The situation described in the OP is relatively rare, but when it happens it exposes the flaws of the system with glaring clarity.
The children would be much better off if their parents had a choice about how they would be educated.
that you’re talking out of your ass? Because your quote from post #29 stands in pretty stark opposition to post #31.
And if those IDEA dollars are inadequate right now, when they’re considerably lower than that 40% (last I heard, it was somewhere south of 18%) then what in hell makes you think that they’re going to magically become adequate when your voucher system becomes the norm? And inre those “few different. . .funding streams” I would ask the same question.
Once again, the monies that are currently allocated are inadequate. Do your monies come with extra special expanding power? The real downside to this is that the figure that it costs a school district to educate a child is figured as an average, instead of an absolute. Plus, who gets to determine the severity of a given disability?
The adversarial relationship is a constant in all schools, public or private. It appears that you do believe that parents will be whistling Zipp-ah-di-doo-dah out of their asses. You really oughta get out more. And their money doesn’t do a damned thing to help when the school is over half a continent away. Once again: travel, room, board &c.
If the courts agree that these parents can (as I see it) screw the board for every last dime, then yes, precedent will be set. Please pay attention to the issue at hand.
I’m curious as to the particulars of this instance. Elaborate please.
Right. . .relatively rare. . .which is what I said. As to the flaws, as you have already stated, the system is working. Why muck about with something that works?
No, the children would be better off if their parents were educated as to what constitutes a good education. Y’know, as opposed to the unworkable plan that you outline above (inadequate government funds suddenly becoming founts of dollars) wherein nothing whatsoever makes any sense at all. It doesn’t appear that you want to help the children at all. For shame, sir.
Agreed…but also if some parents weren’t so hyperfocused on the “normal” functioning of their kids with a disabilty. I see a lot of "Oh I want wittle Smashlie to go to a normal school, so I can pretend that she’s “normal and healthy” I’ll just have my head up my ass as she complains about social issues or having to work very hard at a pretense of being “normal” (a lot of times mainstreaming tends to be almost utopiaized…don’t even get me started on that! )
Oh, and the thing is… cases like in the OP tend to be kind of rare. Most sped kids tend to fall in the LD range, or more “classic” disabilites. Even cognitive issues and autism, usually fall into the mildier cases. Most kids with disabilites can be educated somewhat. But, yeah…there is that small subpopulation who cannot be educated, and who’s “education” consists of things like physical and occupational therapy…who will end up living in one of those group homes for people with severe or profound mental retardation.
I actually think in some cases, that pediatric nursing homes or pediatric group homes would be better for the extreme kids.
One of my cousins is deaf, and was mainstreamed in public school for most of his education until high school. He asked his parents to send him to a private school for deaf kids, because he was tired of trying to fit in with kids most of whom would not accept him and some of whom were actually cruel. My aunt and uncle did this at their own expense.
I am not disabled in any way that matters to this discussion, but my mother was so profoundly unhappy with the school system where we lived in the '70’s she put me into a private school at her own expense, working two jobs to do so.
I guess that’s why I have such a problem with parents who expect the school system to shell out extra money for one child at the expense of all the others.
Assuming “elsewhere” wants to take on the hassle of educating a handicapped child, and is willing to do it for the amount of money included in the voucher.
Once you give a parent a voucher, you’re also giving the public school a right to tell parents to use the voucher to take the kid elsewhere. And if all the public school systems decide they don’t want to take on the burden of handicapped students, and the private schools say “this will cost you Y, but your voucher only covers X,” where does that leave the parent?
The same type of choice they had before Public Law 94-142?
But what if it’s a choice between the smart kid getting
[ul]
[li] an A++ as a result of the (negligible) extra cost of putting them in a room with other smart kids and a good teacher[/li][li] a D- or excluded because they are so bored they do nothing except disrupt the class and argue with the teachers[/li][/ul]
I have nothing to do with kids or schools, thankfully, but my recollection from my distant childhood is that the smarter kids were a disproportionate source of trouble for the teachers unless they were kept interested.
With that same caveat, I’m also not convinced that ordinary schoolkids (who are sometimes nasty little bullies) are always the best companions for someone with special needs. As FelixKat930 said, education tends to be a one-size-fits-all, one-solution-for-everyone proposition, when it really needs to be looked at in the light of what is right for each and every combination of child, school, teachers and parents - however that’s never going to happen, unfortunately. Whatever is the current policy will get rammed down the throats of everyone concerned, even if they don’t like it and/or it is inappropriate.
