"Magic Feather" - fighting special ed designation

Motek ↓

Thu, Mar 20 2008, 12:57 pm

Quote:

December 7, 1986

CREATING HANDICAPS

By JANE PERLEZ

LORI and Bill Granger, middle-class, well-educated parents in suburban Chicago, were informed one day by a school psychologist that their amiable son, Alec, 6, who could read several years above his grade level, had an I.Q. of 47. Alec, they were told, could only cope if he were placed in something euphemistically called ''special education.''

Special education grew out of a 1972 report by the Children's Defense Fund that said eight million children across the nation were not attending school. Many of these children, mentally and physically handicapped, stayed at home because the schools were not equipped to handle them. Out of this rude awakening came a 1975 act of Congress that allowed good intentions to become bad policy.

Simply put, as the Grangers' book and recent governmental studies have shown, special education classes - established for emotionally and physically handicapped children - have too often become the dumping ground for those students whom teachers find merely troublesome or a little slow in learning.

As a result, special education has become a growth industry in the nation's public school system. So much so that in New York City it consumes $1.1 billion a year, about one-fifth of the annual school budget. Appalled at the ballooning expenses, Mayor Koch last year asked for an investigation. A major reason for the budget surge: too many children like Alec Granger were being shunted out of regular classrooms.

''While there is substantial agreement that children with severe handicaps belong in special education, these students make up a decreasing percentage of the special education population,'' the report to Mr. Koch said. ''There is decidedly less consensus concerning the placement into special education programs of other students, particularly those now characterized as 'learning disabled' and 'emotionally handicapped' who comprise the majority of the special education population.''

In the first part of ''The Magic Feather'' (so named for the feather that helps Walt Disney's Dumbo to fly), the Grangers give a disturbing but compelling account of their battles to keep Alec out of special education classes and of their decision to give up on the public school system and opt for a Montessori school.

They wouldn't stand for special education for Alec because it ''teaches kids how to be failures and to live with being failures. It segregates kids from 'normal' kids by putting special labels on them, putting them in separate classrooms, putting them in separate schools, and making certain that not too much is ever asked of them or expected of them.'' Eventually it was found that Alec had no serious disorder but a problem with his eyesight that was then rapidly cured.

When the Grangers - she a teacher, writer and political consultant, he a novelist and columnist for The Chicago Tribune -move from their personal experiences to examine special education across the country, their findings are sobering. IN some places, they report, special education is used for purposes of segregation.

Black children make up only 16 percent of the public school population in the United States but nearly 40 percent of the classes for so-called educable mentally [crazy] children. Often children are diagnosed as having ''learning disabilities'' and placed in special education classes. But neither the tester nor the teacher who receives the child knows what the ''learning disability'' is. In many cases, a child is placed in these segregated classes with the promise that he or she will be returned to a mainstream class later on. This, say the authors, rarely happens.

The Grangers were rightly indignant about the treatment of their own son. They don't hide their anger in ''The Magic Feather,'' which should prove a useful resource to parents. Teachers and education bureaucrats should take heed.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/f.....views

I read The Magic Feather - quite a damning book, ridiculous how the "experts" told them their child couldn't possibly read since he was [crazy] when the kid could read!

↑ Motek ↓

Thu, Mar 20 2008, 4:43 pm

amother wrote:

I don't understand this story at all.

Even after reading the book I didn't understand what was going on with him. Apparently there was something "off" about him.

Quote:

Also, is this book/article from over 20 years ago? There have been many changes in special education law and practice since 1986. Confused

1986, yes. I am still inclined to believe that many kids are labeled in various ways and in many cases it does not benefit the child but the school.

Someone told my husband that his daughter's school wanted to put her in special ed. The person said the school needed kids in that program and his daughter was going to be a victim.

There was no way he was going to comply with that. He removed her from the school, sent her elsewhere where she did beautifully in a regular classroom.

↑ amother ↓

Fri, Mar 21 2008, 10:29 am

Quote:

I am still inclined to believe that many kids are labeled in various ways and in many cases it does not benefit the child but the school.
Someone told my husband that his daughter's school wanted to put her in special ed. The person said the school needed kids in that program and his daughter was going to be a victim.
There was no way he was going to comply with that. He removed her from the school, sent her elsewhere where she did beautifully in a regular classroom.

It is illegal to qualify a child as special ed without the parent's consent. I don't know why the person would have had to remove his daughter from the school. Most of the time children are labeled as special education because they need that designation to access services that the parents want them to have (speech, tutoring, etc.). Most schools are overwhelmed by the number of kids who need extra help so I don't know that there are really that many that are labeling kids for the money, although I'm sure there are some.

Barbara

Fri, Mar 21 2008, 12:31 pm

amother wrote:

Quote:

I didn't know that it was illegal to designate a child as having special needs without parental permission. Interesting. I suppose that the DOE could fight the parents and demand that a guardian ad litem be appointed if deemed necessary.

But I just wanted to support your other comments. First of all, when people hear that a child was desingated as having special needs (special ed), they immediately think of stand-alone schools or classrooms. That's simply not the case; indeed, most parents who want the DOE to pay for that type of education, or even for *inclusion* classes, have to fight for it tooth and nail. Its just too expensive for school districts to willingly provide except in the most dire cases. I cannot tell you how many people I know who have kids with real needs who have to hire counsel to fight the DOE over *years* and in the meantime to pay for services out of pocket because the DOE refuses to recognize that they need services. Instead, most special ed money these days goes for speech and language, occupational therapy and physical therapy, plus tutoring.

These days, a lot of parents *want* the designation for their kids. Eg, my son (special needs for auditory issues, mostly A student in a mainstream day school) is entitled to time-&-a-half on tests; that will mean that when he takes the BJE (high school entrance exam for MO schools), he'll be entitled to be in a small class instead of the cattle call, and will get time-&-a-half to complete the exam. In my son's case, it is justified, but the fact is that a lot of parents think it gives their kids a step up, and try to get their kids classified for no reason.

When I hear that a kid would be *victimized* by being designated as having special needs, I hear prejudice. Now, that might not be the case here, but most of the time, it is. We're judging kids to be *less* -- less smart, less good, less worthy -- because of that designation. They're not. They're simply kids who need some sort of help or services, kids who might learn a little differently than others.

manhattanmom

Thu, Apr 10 2008, 10:31 am

amother wrote:

I don't understand this story at all.

He had an IQ of 47 because he had a vision problem? IQ tests don't depend on vision skills. Blind children, for example, can score very well on IQ tests. Also, it is difficult to understand how he can read if he has such a severe vision problem.

Also, is this book/article from over 20 years ago? There have been many changes in special education law and practice since 1986. Confused

I'm with you...I don't understand the story at all. The field of Special Education is constantly changing and especially since 1986. IDEA was revised again in 1997....

As far as IQ scores being dependent on vision--currently there are no available IQ tests that are normed for the population of Children who are Blind or have low vision as many are heavily dependent on visual interpretation skills.

Mama Shifra

Thu, May 01 2008, 12:29 pm

amother wrote:

I have read the Magic Feather, and to boot, I have a child with a diagnosed learning disability. The point of this book was to point out that many teachers (yes, including frum ones) are very quick to say, "Your child has a learning disability, and I cannot have him/her in the classroom." So your child is shipped off to special ed, even if the learnining disability he/she has could be dealt with in the regular classroom. The child is needlessly stigmatized and separated from his/her peers and may not be challenged in the special ed classroom. Neither I nor the book The Magic Feather are saying that there is not a need for special education, just that children should be sent to special education judicially. That message is probably just as apropo as it was in 1986.

Shifra