Sad to Be A Georgian

There are just some days that I hate living in this state. For all the things I love about where we live – our house, the weather, my church family, our friends – there is a mindset here (maybe there’s a mindset everywhere) that is really starting to bug me involving special needs children.

The educational reporter for the Atlanta Journal Constitution wrote an article for their blog yesterday about the actions of some special education advocates who are opposing the new state regulations that were enacted in July (without much public/parental input). . At issue are many changes that have been enacted that limit the rights of disabled children in Georgia to get a free, appropriate public education.

The one I’m most familiar with (and grieved by) is the double standard that Georgia’s regulations now has for handling a medical homebound request by a licensed physician. The general regulations allow for educational services to be provided to students whose doctors request (through appropriate forms) that the child receive the services at home because he/she is unable to attend school due to health reasons. In the special education rules though, this same procedure is subject to the IEP team convening and deciding if medical homebound is the correct placement. The doctor’s request is referred to as an “opinion to be considered” in the special education regulations, instead of the implication that it will be honored, as it is for general education students.

This is just one of many discrepancies that can lead (and is leading) to special education students not having the same rights and treatment as general education students.

But what really saddens me is the underlying attitude toward special education and students with disabilities. It’s all over the numerous comments in this blog, or responses to any articles about special education. There are some Georgians (and I hope they are just a noisy minority, but I am beginning to think otherwise) that don’t “believe” many children’s disabilities are “real”.

In the comments to this recent blog there is much discussion about whether ADHD even exists, for example. And there’s the tired excuse of “bad parenting” as being the cause for a child’s learning disabilities.

Having observed several school districts’ special education programs when I monitored compliance for two years through a state Dept of Ed program, I learned that the prevailing attitude in many schools was that children in special education don’t learn because they have “bad parenting”. I heard this from at least one teacher in every system we visited. And I came to understand that children with disabilities were immediately suspect of the “bad parenting” disease. Like all stereotypes, there may be some basis in fact to this. But like all stereotypes, this presumption can be a very dangerous one for many children.

Thankfully the blind children, children in wheelchairs or ones with Downs Syndrome are usually not openly “blamed” for their disabilities, nor are their parents. And they are usually quickly identified as disabled and start receiving specialized educational services early on. But the children with autism, ADHD, learning disabilities, processing disorders and other “hidden” impairments are quickly dismissed as lazy or undisciplined. And many are not identified for a long time, until the academic rigors become so difficult that the child can no longer keep up and either disengages (he’s lazy) or acts out (he’s undisciplined). And don’t get me started on traumatized children, who are almost never recognized as disabled or given special supports.

The attitude I find most troubling are the comments from teachers who firmly believe that disabled children will be better served by some type of corporal punishment. They will “learn” to behavior despite their disabilities if you just hit them, isolate them or arrest them enough times. It is an attitude that condones abusing autistic children or arresting children with developmental disorders who become frustrated and dangerously act out.

How I wish that corporal punishment worked to solve our children’s behaviors, because it is much easier to enact a strict punishment and change a behavior (except it doesn’t work) than it is to unravel the tangled mess of a child with a disability who is then traumatized further because he/she was abused at school (and that includes emotional abuse of letting the child know just how “bad” he is.)

Don’t get me wrong. Not for one second do I believe that a child shouldn’t be held accountable for their actions…even a child who has very limited control over their actions. Our job as teachers, and parents, is to grow children to be self-sufficient adults able to live in society (if at all possible.) But, at what point do we get to hold educators responsible for their actions concerning these children? Shouldn’t educators be required to provide a safe environment for these children and to understand that “invisible” disabilities are true disabilities and not an act of willful disobedience due to bad parenting? Is it too difficult to understand that children with these disabilities often exhibit their frustration, their fear, and their inability to communicate through behaviors?

Understanding the reasons for the behaviors doesn’t mean you don’t address them. Realizing a child is disabled doesn’t mean you don’t teach them how to function appropriately in the world. But it does mean you don’t blame the child (or the parents) for their disability. And it means you “do something” to help the child…not just continue to ignore or punish him.

I suspect this attitude is not confined to Georgia. But I’m struck by how many people here view these children as “bad”. So it shouldn’t surprise me that the state’s solution to these bad children is to warehouse them in segregated schools where restraint and isolation are used daily, and very little true intervention work is ever done.

New Special Education Rules in Georgia

Educate America!

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