Why this blog

I am one of those lucky few speech language pathologists (SLP) who have had the opportunity to work in all sorts of settings and see the entire spectrum of special needs children.

I started my career in India a decade ago. At that time, India had just six or seven colleges to train speech pathologists, and there were only a couple of thousand therapists for a billion people. With minimal resources, little money, and without assessment tools or therapy materials, we learned to assess, diagnose, and treat children and adults. We regularly attended camps in rural parts of India, where we evaluated, diagnosed, and counseled hundreds of patients in a single day. We treated the poor for ten rupees (eighteen cents USD) or for free. We neither had much money nor made much money. It was not a perfect system, but I did have one thing—job satisfaction.

Then I came to the United States. I worked in preschool, elementary, middle, high, and postsecondary schools, as well as a juvenile justice program and two private special schools. In my career I had the opportunity to see the entire spectrum of special education in the United States and its results—from the time children entered special education programs to when they left as young adults.

The US government spends $77.3 billion per year on these special education programs. That means on average, the government spends $12,474 per year, per special needs child. So over a period of twenty years, the cost averages $249,480 per special needs student. Thus, here in the US, there is money, as well as infrastructure, professionals, and research and development. This is the nearly perfect, dream-come-true system. But here I do not have one thing—job satisfaction. Here I am stressed out. As a professional, I spend most of my time and energy in a polished, defensive, politically correct depiction of reality. I attend never-ending IEP meetings to talk about a child who may be struggling to feed himself or speak for himself. The meetings may include more than a dozen people—half of whom who have seen the child for less than an hour or never at all. Claims, demands, denials, and fights that go on and on . . . The result is more confused, frustrated, and unhappy parents and school districts. Everyone loses money, time, and energy. The children still struggle in their own ways. The US special education system functions so irrationally that my common sense does not permit me to follow the herd anymore.

The real question here is—does more money, more professionals, more scientific advancement, and more infrastructure solve our problems? Does more of anything make our process and outcome better? My short answer is no. Our problem lies in our mindset, in our priorities, in our obsessions, and in our understanding.

With this blog I am not trying to challenge or fix anything or anyone. I only desire to share my perspective on special education and disabled children, which I’ve developed from my experiences. Through parables, anecdotes, and stories, I wish to shed light on the US special education system from a vantage point that I hope will help American parents see special education services within a wider context. No government, school, social worker, therapist, or teacher lives with and feels the everyday pain and stress of parents of children with disabilities. Parents care for and worry about their own child more than anybody else does. So I believe that parents should be given all available tools to help their child succeed. This blog is an attempt to give parents a bird's-eye view of common mistakes, typical distractions, and what really matters.