Special ed limits
Schools can't afford open-ended demands, Bradenton Herald.com Opinion, July 18, 2004

Fearing far-reaching consequences, the Manatee County District School Board has made itself a test case for the limits of special education. It's another drain of scarce resources for legal fees. But in this case, the legal action is justified.

The board has decided to countersue the mother of a fourth-grader with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) who took the district to court challenging denial of a special individual education plan for her son. Although the child makes A's and B's in class and passed FCAT, the mother contends he is held back because behavior associated with his disorder results in stressful disciplinary actions that reduce his learning potential. The board, its lawyers and special ed staff say the student has been given an adequate education plan and the proof is his good grades and normal progress.

It is too bad that this kind of case has to be decided in the courts rather than a conference room. No one truly wants to deny a disabled child the chance to reach his or her potential. That is, in fact, the principle behind the federal Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, which guarantees the right for "specially-designed instruction . . . to meet the unique needs of each child." As with the companion Americans With Disabilities Act, the IDEA was a reaction to the practice of shunting families of children with disabilities off to the side to fend for themselves if they couldn't keep up with kids in the mainstream.

Abusing a right

However, there are limits on how much school districts can spend to meet each child's individual needs. Across the country parents have used IDEA to make outrageous demands on districts struggling to provide basic education. In Georgia a court ordered the district to pay to send a child with severe autism to a special school in Japan. Another district was ordered to offer a plan for a student that cost $200,000 a year. A New Hampshire mother demanded - and won - a special education plan for a son born with multiple handicaps who could do virtually nothing for himself except part his lips when being spoon-fed.

Manatee County has a heavy special-education burden. It serves 8,000 students with exceptional-education plans. School officials say the contested case could set a precedent that would open the door to similar requests from 2,000 more - and many thousands statewide. At a cost ranging from $2,000 to $16,000 per student, it's easy to see how such efforts could bankrupt the school system.

Certainly, children with special needs deserve special attention from their teachers. And, the the parent suing the school board concedes that when her son got individual attention he did well. But she said some teachers didn't properly deal with behavior issues related to his ADHD, like talking, fidgeting, tapping, running and breaking other class rules. Instead of providing time for him to move around during class and for physical activity, teachers punished him by making him stand against the wall and stay in class during recess, she said.

Is mainstreaming best?

ADHD kids should not be punished for conduct caused by a disorder over which they have no control. But this raises a point that is key to the whole issue of special-needs education: mainstreaming. Until sometime in the 1980s, special-needs children were sent to special learning centers equipped and staffed to meet their needs. Orange Ridge-Bullock Elementary in south Bradenton was Manatee's designated special-needs center. But as court rulings affirmed the legal right of children with disabilities to be educated in the "least restrictive environment possible," the belief that special-needs children should be brought into the mainstream took root. Bureaucrats call it "inclusion" - the idea that all children, including those with severe disabilities, should and can learn in a regular classroom.

This belief is far from universal. Many educators and parents of students with disabilities question whether it is in the best interest of handicapped children. Hard-fought-for special-education services could be lost, they fear, and their children could wind up being dumped into regular classrooms with poorly trained teachers and inadequate equipment.

In 1996, Albert Shanker, executive director of American Federation of Teachers, asserted that, "full inclusionists don't see that medically fragile children and children with severe behavioral disorders are more likely to be harmed than helped when they are placed in regular classrooms. . ."

Indeed, how is a mainstream teacher to deal with an ADHD student who frequently acts up because of his disorder? She can't ignore the disruptive behavior, but if she is forced to focus a great deal of time on him the rest of the class suffers. Why not group ADHD students in a separate classroom with enough special-ed teachers to provide the individual attention each needs? That maximizes special-ed resources and ensures a more orderly mainstream classroom. It seems to us the ADHD child is most likely to reach his maximum potential in a special-needs classroom than a mainstream one.

Unfortunately, such pragmatic solutions don't carry much weight in the courts, where rights are too often adjudicated to ridiculous lengths - as long as it's coming from someone else's deep pockets. These days, the school district's pockets are full of holes.