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Are Special Education Numbers Really Dropping?
By Richard | August 31, 2007
So is it a real drop or are the numbers being cooked?
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Questioning the decline in special education students in public school
Letter to the Editor | Maryland Independent
At a time when autism diagnosis rates are one in 150 in the United States and most school systems’ special education departments across the country are being overwhelmed by children on the autism spectrum who require their services (let alone other learning and emotional disabilities that are on the rise), I am very concerned that the Charles County public school system’s special ed rates for the number of children that are being provided special ed services are decreasing significantly.
Instead of being something to to brag about by the school system, I think this should be viewed by parents and local and county government officials as a big red flag that something is amiss as to how the Charles County Public School special ed services are being made accessible to children in our county.
I am not challenging the skills of the school system’s varied experts on how they administer the testing needed to determine whether a child is qualified for special ed services but I do believe that the test results are being interpreted by those experts in favor of the schools system’s budget restrictions rather in favor of the many children who require the services.
Let’s face it, school budgets are tight and I’ll allow the reader to draw their own conclusion from that.
I feel that school staff responsible for testing and interpreting test results may have conflicts of interest (pressure of keeping their job) that sway the outcome too often.
In the article, “The Blame Game! Are School Problems the Kids’ Fault?” by Pamela D. Wright, it states that “school psychologists will increasingly face the burden of deciding whether they work for the schools or for the children.”
This could be applied to other school experts involved in the special ed process as well.
I am a college-educated parent and nurse and someone who has spent many hours researching autism and special ed issues for my own knowledge.
I also am a parent who has sought the free services of a local parent advocate and, when necessary, a paid educational advocate, to help me understand all the nuances of special ed law and test result interpretation and to make sure that my children (two sons on the autism spectrum) were treated fairly by the Charles County Public Schools process.
My concern is for the children who are probably slipping through the cracks, and hence lowering the public schools’ special ed numbers, because their parents are not able or willing to do the same.
When I read the article published by this paper about the lowering of special ed numbers in local public schools [”County’s percentage of special education students drops.,” July 20] I contacted the director, Linda Jacobs, of my oldest son’s out-of-county special needs school, where he has been placed since 2004, The Harbour School of Annapolis, to get her opinion on the subject.
She has 45 years of experience in special ed and both a master’s and doctorate in the field. Her response was: “In my view the dramatic reduction in the number of students needing special education services reported by Charles County can only be a result of a failure to identify. In the early 70s when I served as director of special education for Anne Arundel County Public Schools we changed the definition of what a learning disabled child was. Overnight we reduced the number of learning disabled students in the district by 27 percent. The children nor their needs had not changed, just the definition.”
More parents, and local and county government official, need to question what the real reason is for our county’s public school special ed numbers dropping significantly and not just accept the school system’s view of it.
Deborah Mason, Waldorf
Topics: In The News, Advocacy, Education |