Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Special Ed Screening

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One of the many, many important issues that I work to be informed about is special education. I attend the meetings of the Special Education Advisory Committee as often as possible. When LoudounExtra posted a report back on New Years Eve regarding the conflict that often exists between parents of kids with special needs and the administrators tasked with meeting those needs, it was familiar territory for me:

Parents Protest as Schools Delay Screening to Save Money
Since a 1975 federal law gave students with learning disabilities a right to special education, the number of such students who receive such services has risen to 6 percent of the public school population. The figure was less than 2 percent in 1977.

Many educators say learning disabilities have been over-diagnosed and are seeking ways to address learning difficulties in mainstream classrooms, rather than addressing them through special education for as much as twice the cost. Loudoun officials estimate their cost per pupil in special education is $22,000 a year, compared with $12,000 for most students.
Among the issues that concern my fellow parents, special education strikes a particularly deep nerve. Two of the cuts to the originally proposed LCPS budget this year were for positions dealing directly with special education, an Eligibility Coordinator and a Diagnostician. This will have an impact on many students and parents.

This is the most complicated issue I have come across. Assistant Principals generally oversee special education programs within their schools. I know of multiple APs who are hailed by the parents at their schools as great educators and administrators and at the same time decried as harsh, uncaring bullies by other parents who watched the AP lead the process of evaluating their child and meeting the child's needs.

Special education is at once a highly specialized field and one that affects kids in nearly every classroom. It is at the same time a challenge that requires a systemic approach and one in which every child must be cared for individually. These contradictions lead to many questions but no answers.
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9 comments:

  1. There were other cuts directly impacting special education, including additional speech and language pathologists. Special education is always suffers. At our school, our resource classrooms were replaced with 10 x 10 offices and the five resource teachers offices are located in a hallway with dividers (no computer, no phone, no confidentiality). Our children have no place to go to when they need redirection, pullout instruction, or a place to calm. All of this is done in front of their peers in the classroom or hallway.
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  2. Everyone’s child has special needs. I think the question is how do we fairly allocate educational resources?

    Since the 1970's the Title I program emphasized equity of educational opportunity by leveling the disparity between rich and poor districts through federal funding. Now with NCLB we emphasize equity in output -- every child must achieve a threshold skill level and resources must be diverted to those students who aren’t achieving at grade level.

    The NCLB goal of reducing discrimination by looking at test scores is laudable but it contradicts the equality of opportunity goal of Title 1 because some students require more resources to achieve the minimum target than others.

    If education is a public investment in the future then we need to measure results accordingly. The students that achieve should get more educational resources just as the stock market gives more capital to companies that perform well. Instead, public education policy devotes more money to the under-performing students – the special needs students.

    We have sympathy for those that are left out in the cold realism of a capitalistic distribution of educational resources. We rightly have a layer of social welfare in our educational system. We tip the playing field so children in poverty, with disabilities, or disadvantaged because of discrimination have more opportunities.

    We just need to recognize that social welfare programs in schools makes them inefficient.

    We need a hybrid model of how to allocate educational resources that achieves efficiencies closer to a capitalistic system while recognizing the need for a welfare component in public schools.

    We should allocate each student the same base investment each year. Say $15,000. Poor children or children with special needs would have a supplemental allocation. Parent would then make choices on how to maximize their child’s education with the money available. Some might choose sports and skimp on academics. Others would demand only the best and highest paid teachers, multiple sports, and Mandarin and would have to pay tuition to cover the extra cost. Demanding parents with special needs children would likewise pay a tuition supplement to cover the costs above the base allocation plus the special needs supplemental.

    This would limit what currently is an open-ended taxpayer obligation to do whatever it takes to get Johnny to pass the test. And, it would eliminate the rationing that is characteristic of a socialistic distribution system.
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  3. In regard to the comment that parents of kids who receive special education services should pay more...

    We used to spend twice our mortgage each month on private therapies outside of what the school system was able or willing to provide.

    Not one penny of that was paid for by insurance as these therapies were considered "habilitative" - an 80 year old can have a strole and get speech therapy to relearn how to talk but a three year old learning pragmatic speech gets nothing. That's the reality of the insurance industry.

    My personal experience unfortunately is the norm for parents of special needs children. We spend thousands of dollars every year out of our own pockets to provide the basics of what our kids need - how to walk, talk, read, even eat. Consider yourself lucky if you've never had to bring in a feeding specialist or hire someone to help toilet train your child or even if your child can play soccer like the other kids in the neighborhood.

    It costs society less to educate kids with special needs and enable them to be self-sufficient adults who are able to pay taxes than to ignore them and have to support them their entire lives.

    I feel no shame in requesting services for my daughter. Yes, it costs more now but she's going to grow up to be a contributing member of society. That's true of the majority of the kids out there in Loudoun County with IEPs.
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  4. Every parent spends tens of thousands of dollars a year in unreimbursed expenses to raise their children. The question is how much of that cost should be transfered to the taxpayer.

    Julie seems to believe the "invest in our children" model but doesn't do the math to show how much more an investment of $x over standard in her child is going to return value to society over spending those $x for someone else's child.

    All parents love their children and spend lavishly on them. The childless neighbors and elderly don't love them as much especially if they are stuck paying the bill.

    What makes child A more special than child B when it comes to allocating educational dollars? Is it the parents that are the loudest and most aggressive? That's not fair!
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  5. Ed,
    The cost to teach basic life skills to a special needs child cannot be equated to the extra (most often optional expenses) of raising children who do not have these needs.

    Julie made some valid points about how skewed the insurance system is and that the cost of early intervention with a special needs child is much less than the cost further down the line--in both human and monetary costs.

    Besides, your solution would create an entirely new layer of bureaucracy that would negate any cost savings. There are savings achieved now through economies of scale that would not be possible under your solution. Unfortunately, your "solution" is really a ruse to cover a typical anti-education spending argument that only parents with children should bear the cost rather than society.

    Now just because I believe in the common good and that education funding is a shared societal obligation, I do still believe that LCPS has been profligate with its spending and that when it makes cuts, it goes after easy cuts that also engender protest.
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  6. Anonymous,

    Why should the public schools system divert educational dollars to alleviate a problem in the health care system? School dollars should focus on educational expenses not medical ones.

    Sympathy for the additional costs associated with teaching handicap children is why I proposed an extra allocation for those students. The issue you didn't respond to is why that additional allocation should be an open ended taxpayer expense as opposed to a capped system.

    The problem with taking the common good argument to the extreme is that children then become the ward of the state and the family as a institution become dissolved because it is irrelevant. Parents no longer can make decisions about their childen because the investment is solely that of the government.

    I think that is a bad thing. Children need the nurture of families.

    Once we start down the path that one child deserves more public funding than the next because they are more "special" and the expenses are just more important than the "optional" expenses of any other child because of situation y, we get into a "my child is more important than yours" fight that doesn't lead to equality.

    My proposal to have an additional allocation for the poor also addresses the societal desire to help those who don't have the means to invest adequately in their children.
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  7. The previous comments indicate a lack of information about current federal and state law regarding the education of children with special needs. Since 1975, federal law has guaranteed a "free and appropriate public education" to all children, irregardless of their abilities. Title I and NCLB do not direct a school district’s efforts to meet the needs of students with an Individual Educational Plan (IEP). Furthermore, the law mandates special education and related services for children who qualify, at no cost to their parents. The law does not provide “medical services”, but specialized instruction, tailored to help a child benefit from their education.

    Unquestionably, our society recognizes the value and necessity of education for all students. And clearly, a relatively small number of children, with diagnosed physical, cognitive or learning disabilities need and deserve more intensive efforts to learn and achieve. These services can amount to a larger dollar amount per pupil. However, comments equating the stock market with educational resources are appalling. A child's education is not a commodity traded on an open market. No child should be educated in an environment where return on investment would be considered as the determinant as to whom will be allocated resources. Children of all abilities can contribute to society in positive ways.

    The lack of empathy for these students expressed by the previous two posters is disheartening. I work as a special educator in LCPS. It is unbelievable that my students and their families have to be exposed to the kind of discrimination expressed in this forum, from members of their community. The federal law (Individuals with Disabilities Act) was created to protect their rights and is obviously still necessary 33 years after first legislated.

    “The test of a morality of a society is what it does for its children.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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  8. This is why I dislike anonymous post. Someone can come along and not read a previous post very carefully and then make false allegations such as that so-and-so has a "lack of empathy" or is being discriminatory without anyone being able to hold them accountable.

    The question that isn't being answered: What is moral about taking educational dollars from one child and giving it to another?

    On what basis does schools determine that some children "need and deserve more intensive efforts to learn and achieve"? The concern that the big increase in special ed labeling might be parents pushing for labels because they get an advantage in allocation of educational resources is not due to a lack of empathy but of fundamental fairness to students and taxpayers.

    Let's use an absurb analogy.

    My children are genetically deficient as basketball players. They are late bloomers and will likely be shorter than average. Schools discriminate by cutting them from the varsity athletic team because other players score higher in games.

    I think being on the varsity team is an educational accomplishment that my child needs to become a productive and integrated member of society. (Clearly this is more important than academic achievements as evidenced by the coverage of sports by the media compared to academic achievements.) So I demand that the school pay for summer basketball camps and assign a one-on-one full-time coach so my children can overcome their physical handicap and play on the team.

    The additional costs of my children's intensive coaching means the team has less money available and to have a winning team (because my children deserve to be state champions) funds will have to be taken from some other program.

    The moral of this story is that every child has special needs because they are not above average in everything. When we spend more money on some children because of a "special" need we discriminate by underfunding the needs of others. Funding is a zero sum game.

    What is the set of skills that every child needs to achieve no matter what the cost? What set of educational resources should be allocated based on Return on Investment so they are efficiently and democratically allocated?

    I proposed a middle road between those two extremes with a deference to parental choice. The response from LCPS special education department appears to be that any compromise is discriminatory and immoral. That position closes the door to a rational discussion of this issue.
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  9. Ed,

    Thank you for your comments and your positions.

    Anonymous 7:20PM, I really don't understand your argument here and I know I would find it difficult to evaluate ed's argument dispassionately if I worked with these children as you do.

    But we need to think through this in a dispassionate way so limited resources are properly and fairly used.

    No one was categorizing children or their education as a commodity, but it is necessary to some way measure (cost/benefit is one) or rethink the model (education or medical expense) in which we are now working to move us to a better solution.
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