Outside the Mainstream

As I sat through yesterday's IEP meeting, I felt grateful. I was surrounded by a committed group of educators capable of handling the frustrating riddle that is my child. Although she's very bright, she has trouble functioning in the classroom for reasons nobody fully understands. After moving her out a mainstream classroom, she immediately went from problem child to unqualified success. We're very fortunate.

In theory, laws like The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA 2004) guarantee all kids a "Free and Appropriate Education." They require schools to invest more resources in kids who need them. Such kids get Individualized Education Programs, or a special set of written rules for educating them. If your school district believes in mainstreaming (like ours does) this can cause trouble.

Everybody knows our teachers have tough jobs. Those who take their profession seriously are overworked. Schools are notoriously underfunded, and I know from serving on the Financial Advisory Council of our own District that special education is a huge part of the budget. The ratio of kids to teachers is never as good as anyone would like and no parent is ever satisfied with the amount of attention their child receives.

Special needs kids strain this already strained system. They add demands to a mainstream classroom that schools may not be equipped to handle. Sometimes, the mainstream teachers lack the training or temperament and sometimes they lack the resources. Two recent news stories illustrate the problem. In one, a teacher encouraged her class to humiliate a child with Aspergers by reciting what they disliked about him and then voting him out of the room. In another, the teacher called a kindergartener "pathetic" and asked his classmates if this is the kind of person they want to be friends with.

Illinois' highly restrictive wiretapping law would have frowned on the recording that ratted out the second teacher. Even so, and in spite of my earlier post on privacy, I'm perfectly fine with it. I know first hand the anxiety of trying to function in a mainstream classroom can be hard enough on a child. A stressed out teacher can make things worse, or devolve into the kind of abuse that recently hit the news. Special needs kids like mine will test teachers and schools, sometimes beyond their limits. Having an IEP that details a Free an Appropriate Education is not enough, you have to have the training and resources to implement it. The bottom line is, handling this challenge is the moral and legal responsibility of our schools. If things aren't working, don't blame the five year old, make a change. Give the teacher the training or assistance necessary to do the job right. If that's not working, take a break from mainstreaming and give the special education experts a chance.