While Mike was reporting that special education spending was ?heading toward one-third? of all school outlays, I was listening to a report from our school district's special education director who said she didn't really know how much it cost.
That's not reassuring.
She did know, however, that over 20 percent of our 1,950 students (405 to be exact)?are receiving special education services in the 13 official categories of disability.? Although, since?we have no deaf, visually impaired, or deaf-blind students, that's 10 categories.?? In fact,?90 percent of the kids are in just five categories, not surprisingly those of cloudy origin and squishy definition: emotional disturbance, learning disability, speech or language impairment, other health impairment, and multiple disabilities; and most, some 43 percent? (178),?are classified ?learning disabled.?? It's not hard to see why.
In struggling districts like mine?depending on where the bar is set, some 30 to 50 percent of general education students score below ?proficiency? in reading and math?special ed looks like the promised land, a beacon of hope for parents whose kids are stuck in a ?regular? classroom. It's special.??There are ?ironclad mandates, a team of ?experts? spending hour after hour?worrying over your kid, ?and money (at least for a few more months, until the system implodes). The ?learning disabled? are there for the picking, a catchall category that can include just about anyone.
According to the?report we received last night, Part 200.1 (zz) of the law or regulation (no source cited), says that a learning disability is:
a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, which manifests itself in an imperfect ability to listen think, speak, read, write, spell, or to do mathematical calculations, as determined in accordance with section 200.4(j) of this Part.
The key, of course, is the combination of the manifestation part?a typical 5th grade classroom with a bad teacher?and the nebulous ?psychological processes.?
While our?regulators say that we should be on the lookout for ?such conditions as perceptual disabilities, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia? and warn that ?the term does not include learning problems that are primarily the result of visual, hearing or motor disabilities, of mental retardation, of emotional disturbance, or of environmental, cultural or economic disadvantage??whoa, whoa!
Do 10 percent of our kids have some kind of brain injury? Or is one of those indeterminate psychological processes?? Or, in fact,?could the?child's ?imperfect ability to listen think, speak, read, write, spell, or to do mathematical calculations? be the result of poor instruction?
Our regulators have an answer for that, in Part 200.4(j):
To insure that underachievement in a student suspected of having a learning disability is not due to lack of appropriate instruction in reading or mathematics,?the CSE [Committee on Special Education] must, as part of the evaluation procedures pursuant to section 200.4(b) and (c) of this Part, consider, (a) data that demonstrate that prior to, or as part of, the referral process, the student was provided appropriate instruction in regular settings, delivered by qualified personnel, and (b) data-based documentation of repeated assessments of achievement at reasonable intervals, reflecting formal assessment of student progress during instruction?.
So, if you're persistently failing, you have a disability. Who determines what ?appropriate instruction? is??Do ?regular settings? include classrooms where half the students are roaming around, texting, talking? Are the same folks who are overseeing an instructional program in which 50 percent of the kids are below grade-level the same ones interpreting the special ed laws?
And I haven't mentioned ?emotional disturbance,? another popular category of disability (the second highest number of kids, 16 percent of the total). Definition, please:
an inability to learn that cannot be explained by intellectual, sensory, or health factors.
So, if it's not a psychological process, it must be an emotional disturbance. Could it be explained by?poor instruction?? (See Part 200.4(j) above.)
Then there is, section (ii), as it relates to emotional disturbance, which says?that?it is?also:
an inability to build or maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships with peers and teachers,
which is followed closely,? in section (v), by this:
the term does not apply to students who are socially maladjusted, unless it is determined that they have an emotional disturbance.
Who's got time for reading and writing and arithmetic when we're trying to parse this stuff?
Our fiscal crises may help put some brakes on the regulatory madness. In the meantime, the briar patch of special ed regulation is thick and thorny?and a beckoning haven for education bureaucrats.
?Peter Meyer, Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow
