For Kids Who Need It, Special Ed Matters
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR: John W. Porter, Portland Press Herald
January 30, 2005

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At the risk of teaching my boy all of my bad study habits, we used our time driving to school on Friday to cram for his spelling test that day.

"I've got an idea," I said. "Why don't you read the words to me and see if I spell them correctly."

"Will that help?"

"Sure," I said. "You'll have to spell them along with me to see that they're right."

So we began to work through the list of words he was having trouble with. They included "irresponsible," "illegal" and my nemesis, "irresistible."

"I-r-r-i-s-i-s-t-i-b-l-e," I said. No, the boy said, that wasn't right. "I-r-r-e!"

More of the rest of the list, then back to the same word. Again I got it wrong. Same mistake. A few minutes later, I did it again a third time.

This is something I live with.

For instance, my son and I have always read together, and when he was younger he especially liked books about dinosaurs. When I'd get to one those long dinosaur names with the pronunciation guide next to it, I'd stop cold. I mean, it was like my brain was missing the piece used to process that information. Sometimes 30 seconds would go by before I could take a stab at the unfamiliar word.

I've covered it up and driven it so deep into my past that I often forget about it. I forget how much it defined me, humiliated me and angered me. I forget how lucky I was that someone saw it for what it was in 1967. I forget how different my life would be had I not come to terms with it.

I have a learning disability.

I want to share this for a couple of reasons. First, to all the students out there who have been labeled "special education" and feel like they can't get any traction, know that it can be done. You can learn to compensate. My particular learning issues - which were not as neatly defined as is often the case now - made it difficult for me to write. I'm talking really difficult here, repeat-the-third-grade difficult. Not just handwriting, which was a struggle, but English composition. When I was in the 6th grade my writing was not anywhere near what my peers could do.

Now consider this: For the past 23 years every dollar I've made has been earned as a writer or editor, and these days, as a senior editor at the state's largest newspaper, I'm doing just fine, thank you very much.

The more important message, though, has to go out to parents, teachers and especially politicians and the voters. Too often, particularly at the local level, special education is viewed as an unfair burden to the taxpayers. The cliched image is of a kid who has profound issues - the kind that might cost hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to address - in a small district where taxpayers can feel the burden directly.

Throughout government there is a fair amount of buck-passing when it comes to special education. The local towns and cities want the state to pay for it. The state complains that the federal government isn't doing its part. The feds always end up coming up short on it.

Fortunately, there are laws that require that the services be provided, and for thousands of kids across Maine those laws give them a shot at a brighter future. The system for identifying and serving special needs kids is imperfect, however. And as the state tries to address those issues, it's not clear that the remedies being discussed are going to make it better.

The system used for identifying kids with special needs is squishy. That's a good thing in some ways, because kids can't be neatly categorized. But it also creates a gross inequity amplified by class. The reality is that, given the costs and the political currents that special ed can generate, school systems sometimes resist classifying kids as special needs. The further reality is that, when a parent knows the law and can be an effective advocate, he or she can usually force the district to provide services.

The unfortunate thing is that a parent's ability and willingness to advocate for his or her child is often determined by that parent's socio-economic status.

The other inequity plays out district to district. Because of differences in local tax bases, the school aid formulas and political support for the education budget, there are big disparities in Maine district-to-district when it comes to special ed.

State Sen. Michael Brennan, D-Portland, says that, in some districts, as few as 7 percent of the kids receive specialized instruction to address a learning disability. In other districts, 35 percent of the kids are considered to have a learning disability.

The school funding law passed by voters last June calls on the state to pay 100 percent of the cost of special education. The devilish details of that policy, though, could make it tougher for some kids to get services while in other cases services could be given out needlessly.

Susan Gendron, the state commissioner of education, says that the first 15 percent of a district's kids who are classified as special ed will bring aid to the district at more than double rate normally provided on a per-pupil basis. After 15 percent, a little bit more money is given when a kid is classified as special ed, but not anything close to double.

The state is also trying to standardize the criteria used to determine if a kid has a learning disability, Gendron said.

So, in districts where more than 15 percent of the kids are designated as special education, there will be strong incentives to get kids out of those programs. Where fewer than 15 percent are classified as having a learning disability, there will be strong incentives to get more kids into these programs.

I get why state policy makers would want to put some controls on this spending, but maybe that's not terribly smart in the long run. Numerical targets for special education services might serve the bean counters and policy wonks, but do they serve every child?

I'm not a neutral observer here, but from where I sit, it's better that we identify too many kids as special needs than too few. Senior editors at newspapers, after all, make and spend a lot more money - and pay a lot more taxes - than high school dropouts.