There is, of course, a discussion to be had about the most effective way to teach students with disabilities. It’s a whole field of social science, after all, and lots of smart people spend lots of time collecting, processing, and analyzing data to make the best policy decisions possible. Based on discussions with teacher friends of mine, we may, in some cases, be going too far at including students with severe disabilities in general education classrooms, as those teachers are not equipped to educate those students (and at the same time, their presence can disrupt the learning environment for everyone else).
Of course, it’s impossible to have this discussion at all without discussing the elephant in the room, which is the decades-long war that the Republican party has been waging on public education. To a severely underfunded school, educating students with severe disabilities does present a financial burden they can hardly bear. The fix, of course, is not to start being an asshole to children, but to properly fund our public schools. I’m sure the OP disagrees.
Ummm. I was special needs. As in needed language, speech help. But I feel like I was important enough to receive it. As were all students in ASL classes with me.
I find your whole premiss distasteful and not what good people do to others of less ability.
What proportion of people who are in special education in American public schools never get a job? What do you propose should be done with the ones who can never get a job. Do you want to have them killed? What kind of institution do you want to put them in? How much does it cost per year to keep them in such an institution? Do you think that their parents should pay for all the cost of keeping them somewhere? I know a couple with a child with Down’s syndrome. They are both quite intelligent. The mother is now finishing a Ph.D. in fact. The other two children are quite intelligent. Do you think that the mother, the father, and the other two children should pay huge amounts to keep them in institutions? Do you think that they and the child should all be killed if they refuse to pay those amounts?
Evidently, the vast majority of this “large amount of money” spent on special education services is going to students who are not severely learning disabled to the point of being unable to achieve normal cognitive function as adults.
Where exactly does the OP propose to draw the line between SPED services they think should be funded and ones they think shouldn’t? That’s the trouble with making arbitrary categorical pronouncements about human characteristics that exist on a continuous spectrum rather than in nice neat sharply distinct categories. The educational support that looks like just “babysitting” to one person may look like a significant cognitive-function benefit to another person.
Blindness and paralysis are in a different category from the others. Obviously a gym class could not have the same standards, and paper exams would have to be done differently.
Regarding the others, I may be a troglodyte here, but if you mean extra time on exams, I think that allowing enough time for puzzling things out makes sense for everyone. But basic fairness says equal testing standards.
I recently heard a friend of a friend story about a college accomodation to allow take home tests. In the AI era, it seems to me that take home tests are a complete no-no. Back to the blue book!! In the case I heard about, the professor is under pressure to allow the obvious cheating which would occur with a take home testing accommodation.
Where I totally disagree with you is on connecting any of this to funding levels. The U.S. is still a rich enough country to have special education. If it is out of hand, it is only with respect to students whose disability is marginal.
By marginal, I would include myself, who was diagnosed with ADD, at about age 30, when my family doctor said he thought I had it, and sent me to a psychiatrist who diagnosed it. It is a personality type with pluses and minuses.
Does this actually occur? I don’t remember being in the same room as someone 5+ years behind me, much less them folding clothes while the rest of us studied.
I suppose it depends on the testing specifications and conditions. When I was in college 40+ years ago, we sometimes had take-home tests that limited what sources we could consult, how much time we could spend, and whether we could collaborate with other students (or seek help from more advanced students). It was an academic honor-code situation: nobody was surveilling us to make sure we complied with the requirements. I don’t see that take-home tests in the age of AI are fundamentally different from that.
(I still remember a take-home test in a computer science class that prohibited consulting the textbook: I came to a problem I initially couldn’t answer, due entirely to insufficient test preparation, and just sat there a few minutes staring across the library aisle at my backpack containing my textbook, wrestling with temptation. Didn’t give in, and in fact managed to figure out a significant chunk of the answer from scratch! I only got a B on that test, but I have always been very proud of that B.)
There always was a lot of cheating where I was. And, since I did not cheat, I did not like the kind of exam you describe.
It’s not the only reason I never cheated, but one reason was that I wanted A’s. And cheating sounded like something that risked a B. What with grade inflation and AI’s getting better every few months, I believe they now give A answers. To me, that does fundamentally change the cheating equation. Maybe a few schools with strong honor systems are different, although historical cheating scandals at West Point and the like make me wonder.
Of course, that is good.
I am a history major who spent 41 years as a software developer. I sometimes went to vendor classes, usually week-long, where you took a Friday test to get certified. And they did allow you to access the reference guides. Why not? On the job, I always had access to a technical library.
You might then say – if I wasn’t retired, wouldn’t I be getting code snippets from ChatGPT on the job today, instead of looking in a manual? I doubt there would be a moral issue (unless I am missing copyright issues), so yes. But, putting aside the workplace, if some students are using ChatGPT for an exam, and others are not, that’s a big cheating issue, disability or no disability.
I’m pretty sure the students whose education cost $82,000 a year were those who were unable to attend a hometown school, and they qualified to have the school district send them to a therapeutic school, with tuition paid by the district. Even students who need one-on-one aides wouldn’t result in an expenditure like that.
My BFF’s wife, who is also a licensed LPN, worked for a few years in a classroom for the most severely mentally disabled kids. These were kids who had G-tubes, were often on ventilators, etc. and were often blind and/or deaf, even at the cortical level, which means that there’s no way to know if their eyes or ears work, because their brains did not process the signals. She knew this was really more for the parents than it was for the kids, but the ones who were capable of even basic socialization did benefit from it. Most of them were disabled due to rare genetic issues.
I worked, in my old town, with a woman whose son, brain-damaged from meningitis when he was a baby, attended a school like that. He did have all 5 senses and engaged in non-verbal communication with his parents, but he was incapable of, as the OP said, matching colors or folding clothes. The teachers would do things like hold a crayon and guide it over a page, and he would “color” a picture. Again, this was more for the parents but the kids did benefit from it as well.
OP, where do you draw the line? People with conditions like Down syndrome, or my relative who has autism and will never live independently, must be exposed to things that enable them to reach their greatest potential.
I don’t know what school districts the OP is familiar with, but my wife taught Special Education for 35 years, and that is not the way it works around here. Students who require special assistance are classified as Phase I, Phase II and Phase III.
Phase I students have needs that can be addressed in a normal classroom, e.g., reading materials in large print, wheelchair accessibility, extra time for tests, etc.
Phase II students need extra assistance in some areas, but are capable of handling other classes. Those students have access to special resources, e.g, remedial reading or math.
Phase III students have severe limitations that can not be served in a regular school setting. These can include visual, hearing or orthopedic challenges that require special equipment as well as intellectual or emotional challenges that need to be addressed individually or in small groups.
My wife taught Phase II and III students throughout her career. I personally know one of them who works at a supermarket and another who works at a bakery. No, they didn’t go to college, but not everyone does. But they have jobs and live in society.
Would the OP prefer they were put in an institution at age 5 and kept there for life?
I drew the line before, but my stance is that IEPs and accommodations for students who can meaningfully participate in education are fine, but any amount of money spent on educating someone who those who will never progress beyond an elementary level, profoundly handicapped, or medically or cognitively unable to function independently would be better directed toward students who have the capacity to learn and succeed on their own. Public resources should go to where they can produce measurable outcomes.
Again, glad that yours are doing well, and I understand that these programs can provide socialization and some life skill development, but that doesn’t really translate into meaningful societal benefit. The “greatest potential” for students who are profoundly disabled or unable to live independently is very different from their peers and realistically far more limited.
You still haven’t said what should be done with students that won’t have a job eventually. Do you want to have them killed? Do you want to lock them into a warehouse into which you throw food once a day and in which you allow them to use the floor for a toilet, since they aren’t smart enough to care about having filthy and dangerous floors? Do you want to fine their family for the cost of putting them somewhere better? Do you want to have the child and the family (and I mean everyone out to fourth cousins) killed and all their possessions sold to pay for the cost of having them all killed if none of the family wants to pay anything?
When I was in high school I worked at a McDonald’s restaurant. Our franchise won awards every year for being the cleanest and brightest. The health department gave us a perfect score every time. People drove past two other stores to come to ours for that reason alone.
The lady who kept it that way couldn’t read her paycheck. She was cheerful, diligent, and a caring friend to everyone she worked with. I am exceedingly grateful that she received all the education she was capable of through our local public schools.