American Special Ed System (part 2)

The school district and bureaucrat perspective

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in the academic year 2009-10, there were 6.5 million students receiving special education services in the US. However, school budgets have been cut significantly and schools do not have the money to provide all the needed services to students. Yet if the services are not provided, schools become legally non-compliant and vulnerable to lawsuits.

Let me explain this situation with an example. If you have ten children and one hundred dollars to spend on them, you will spend ten dollars on each child. Then over time the number of children increases to twelve, the price tag for services increases to fifteen dollars per child, and the total funding is reduced to ninety dollars. Then when one parent comes with a lawyer and threatens the school, that particular child will get twenty dollars’ worth of services at the expense of the other children. And if that parent is not appeased, all ninety dollars may be lost in litigation.

Bureaucrats are sincerely trying to deal with the crisis. However, instead of taking proactive, innovative, and simple steps to solve the root causes, schools often take a defensive stance, alienating parents and special education professionals. By increasing paperwork and bureaucracy as a protection and barrier, they add more jobs for themselves and substantially increase administrative costs. Per a study done in the year 1994, fewer than 50 percent of the personnel employed by US public schools were teachers. The self-generated administrative overhead is not a solution, but circumvention of the real problem. This is an old, failed method, but they continue with it, expecting a different result. Had the schools recruited more teachers and decreased the teacher-to-student and professional-to-student ratio, or given intensive therapy and services during the child’s early years, or provided parental training, they would have had some positive results instead.

What drags schools further down?

Poverty! A staggering number of children come from poor families. When the United States’ government talks about foreign aid to save the impoverished in Africa, I feel only pity. If they cared to look into our own inner cities, they would see enough people who are in need right here at home! Poverty is not new to me. I have seen it in its worst forms in India. However, the poverty in America is much more complex. It is not only a matter of economics, but also race, immigration, and narrow-visioned policies and politics. When parents struggle to survive and have no time to deal with their children’s education, schools are at the receiving end of the dilemma. Schools are forced to deal with these children's language, behavioral, educational, moral, psychological, and sometimes even physical needs. These children need a lot of services and help not only in the school but also outside in the community. Schools simply cannot meet all their requirements or solve the problems faced in the community. This is not just a local school matter, rather an issue of politics, policies, and societal concerns. For instance, gun control, children born out of wedlock, teenage pregnancy, gangs, and drug control all play a role in this problem. But these things are not politically correct so no one wants to talk about them. Thus the vicious cycle of poverty continues.

The problem triples when non-English-speaking poor children land in an English-only school. Naturally they lag behind in academics. Without extra support, this lag increases day by day to the point where the children cannot catch up anymore. This results in children getting pushed into special education, developing behavioral issues, dropping out of school, or becoming involved with destructive behaviors like drugs, gangs, or illegal activities.

School to prison pipeline

In one of my school assignments, I worked with Steven John, a seventh-grade student who had the diagnosis of learning disability (LD). He struggled to read even “sight words” like has and was. His teachers and resource specialists tried all the traditional strategies to teach him to read. He still failed. Over years of failure, Steven had developed a strong inferiority complex. By seventh grade, he could not even look into anyone’s face. Steven was so scared of failure that he refused to work with anyone. What was worse, he started using destructive behaviors to get away from the classroom. Even today I feel badly about Steven. Our schools failed him. Schooling only served to kill his confidence and self-esteem. He was a tall, strong boy—we could have taught him many other skills that do not require reading, writing, and great speaking abilities. What’s more painful is that kids like Steven who experience only failure in school will continue their destructive behavior and eventually end up in jail.

This concern is addressed in a report by Robert B. Rutherford Jr., et al, called “Youth with Disabilities in the Correctional System: Prevalence Rates and Identification Issues.”

Although the issue of public safety is paramount, another important concern regarding juveniles who are placed in the correctional system is the way in which they are treated while in that system. Incarceration is an expensive placement alternative (Quay, 1986), with costs for one individual for one year in correctional placement running between $60,000 and $100,000 (Cheney, Hagner, Malloy, Cormier, & Bernstein, 1998). Because these kids will eventually be released into the community, it is both reasonable and necessary to ask how they will be educated to increase their academic, social, and work skills, in the hope that these skills will prevent future criminal behavior and subsequent re-incarceration (Garrett, 1985; Kazdin, 1987).

This is an extremely important political and policy issue. If, in spite of all the accommodations, money and support, these children are still struggling in school, are not learning skills that will make them independent, and are ending up in jails, we are doing something fundamentally wrong. And once in jail, they drain extraordinary amounts of taxpayers’ money (more than the cost of a Harvard MBA) without any positive end result.

If these children end up in jail, it simply means our educational system, special education professionals, parents, and society at large are at fault. Together we fail them.

Does such failure occur because we do not spend enough money on these children? According to a 2005 OECD report, America is ranked as the second highest country in educational spending per student (second only to Switzerland), but out of twenty-one industrialized countries, US twelfth graders ranked nineteenth in math, sixteenth in science, and last in advanced physics. According to a 1999 article by William J. Bennett, former US secretary of education, increased levels of spending on public education have not made schools better. Since 1983, over ten million Americans have reached the twelfth grade without having learned to read at a basic level. Over twenty million have reached their senior year unable to do basic math. Almost twenty-five million have reached twelfth grade not knowing the essentials of US history. So the bottom line is we are spending the money on the wrong things.