An Expensive IDEA

11 Replies to “An Expensive IDEA”

1. As a classroom teacher, I cringe at the thought of this. Parents of students with mild disabilities and savvy lawyers are going to go to town placing their kids in boutique private schools while districts cut programming and increase the average pupil load to balance their budgets. The reality is, there are parents out there who aren’t happy unless their kid has all kinds of accommodations well above and beyond what they need. Now they can thumb their noses at the IEP, demand the world, and then when they don’t get it, stick the taxpayers with the bill for the costly private schooling. I would love to know the backstory of T.A. and his denial of services, I bet there’s a lot more to this than meets the eye.

2. Maybe if school districts were offering more specialized options, like we did before mandated inclusion, parents would be more satisfied with the services and accomodations. Why shouldn’t parents want Cadillac programming for kids with special needs? In fact, why shouldn’t every parent want Cadillac programming for their kid, needs or not? I’m sure these parents who “…aren’t happy unless their kid as all kinds of accomodations…” would be overjoyed to pay for private education if their kid was gifted.

3. I agree with Caroline. As a former teacher in a variety of school settings, my first thought when I read this post was, “All the kids with mild learning disabilities and savvy parents will be getting free private school tuition.”

   It reminds me of the time a few years ago when students with special needs (who were given longer amounts of time to complete standardized tests like the SAT) were suddenly not required to report to colleges that they had taken the test under special conditions. To my recollection, there was a big rush of students being diagnosed with learning disabilities just in time to take the SAT.

   Sometimes I think that IDEA is being stretched past the limits of its original intentions.

4. Kids with learning disabilities absolutely deserve the Cadillac treatment, and parents have every right to seek it out.

   Massively underfunded school systems shouldn’t be placed under this additional burden.

   There’s no bad guy here. Just two sets of victims forced into a zero sum game.

5. Matthew, I don’t agree with that statement. Kids with learning disabilities need to get the services they need to deal with those specific disabilities. Period. A student who needs a keyboard to type because of handwriting issues doesn’t also need small-group testing and extended time on assessments and preferential seating and so on and so forth, but that’s what happens. I’ve worked in districts of all socioeconomic levels, and here’s what happens – in the poor district, I had classes full of kids needing services, and only the most glaring cases even got tested while dozens of kids on the edge got nothing but whatever I could do on the fly. In the middle-of-the-road district, most of the kids who needed services got them, but there was some reluctance to test or identify unless the parents were pushing. I work in a very well-off district now, and the upper-income parents expect ridiculous levels of service for very mild issues. They want all kinds of services and assistance, but then insist that their kid should be in upper-level honors classes so it looks good on the college apps. What I foresee happening is that the savvier parents with more resources will use this law to get boutique education for their kids, while the poorer and less savvy parents will bump along with lesser services. It’s really sad.

6. Kids with learning disabilities need to get the services they need to deal with those specific disabilities.

   And all kids need to get the appropriate instruction. Why is it that students who are not doing well get the benefit of explicit direct instruction through “Response to Intervention” programs, and then when they are seen to improve to the level they should be at, are returned to their normal classroom to undergo the inefficient and ineffective reform math and other fuzzy programs that pass for education? Isn’t there a phenomenon when a learning disability has been brought on by improper instruction? Perhaps a benefit of the Supreme Court decision is to offer parents the choice of so-called “traditional” math that provides direct and explicit instruction with a textbook that has examples that can be followed and is presented in a sequential and logical order that builds upon itself. Perhaps the increase we’re seeing in LD diagnoses is due in part to better diagnostics but also in part to poorly designed reform programs–it may well be that students with mild LD were able to swim with the rest of the pack back in the 50’s and 60’s when math was taught in a more ordered and explicit fashion. With the advent of reform-based, research-based, standards-based and brain-based snake oil, perhaps the increase we’re seeing is because these kids who would otherwise do fine can no longer compensate.

   For those who think highly of the reform programs, they could still opt to have their kids take those classes. But how about the other parents who have to shell out money for Kumon, Sylvan and the like to get their kids the education the schools aren’t providing? Not to mention the “poorer and less savvy” parents who think what the school district is telling them is actually true.

7. By their very nature, learning disabilites *can’t* be brought on by instruction. A true learning disability appears when there’s a discrepancy between performance and ability – as in, the student’s processing function falls far below other tested brain functions. As far as math programming, which seems to be your focus, the mild LD students of the 50’s and 60’s who weren’t identified didn’t “swim with the rest of the pack” for long – they were tracked into lower-level classes, told not to enroll in college prep courses in high school, and/or sent to vocational or “general ed” programs where those existed. Many dropped out by 10th grade. The difference between then and now is that those students could get a job that paid a living wage without a college diploma, or even a high school diploma in some cases.

   I agree that it’s unconscionable that parents have to send their kids out of the school system for accelerated programming. IDEA and NCLB could interpret “special needs” as those needing accelerated learning as well as those needing remedial learning, but sadly, that hasn’t been the case. As far as math instruction, I strongly doubt a Supreme Court case will lead to a mandate for traditional math programming.

8. As far as math programming, which seems to be your focus, the mild LD students of the 50’s and 60’s who weren’t identified didn’t “swim with the rest of the pack” for long – they were tracked into lower-level classes, told not to enroll in college prep courses in high school, and/or sent to vocational or “general ed” programs where those existed.

   Do you have the stats for this and a reference?

9. Sorry – haven’t read the thread yet, but I wanted to respond to the observation that “A true learning disability appears when there’s a discrepancy between performance and ability.”

   “Discrepancy between performance and ability” is, equally, an indicator of ineffective curricula and/or teaching.

   The problem with public schools is that when school personnel see a discrepancy between performance and ability they typically assume that a factor within the child, not the school, is the cause.

   see: Galen Alessi’s famous study “Diagnosis Diagnosed” in PROFESSIONAL SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGY, 3(2),145-151 Copyright @ 1988, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. pp. 148 – 151

10. Here is Siegfried Englemann’s summary of the Alessi study:

    Diagnosis Diagnosed: A Systemic Reaction, Professional School Psychology, 3 (2), 145-151


    Galen Alessi wrote an article in 1988 in which he diagnosed diagnosis. He asked 50 school psychologists to indicate how many cases they referred during the year. The average was about 100 per psychologist; so the group provided information on about 5000 kids. Alessi next tried to determine the different causes of the kid’s learning problems. How many of the kids had the learning problem because of inappropriate curriculum? How many had learning problems because of poor teaching, or because of school administration problems? How many kids had problems because of home problems, or because there was some defect in the kid?

    The percentages came out something like this:

    * The curriculum caused 0% of the referred problems:

    * The teaching practices caused 0% of the referred problems;

    * The school administration caused 0% of the referred problems;

    * The home environment caused 10-20% of the referred problems;

    * The child caused 100% of the referred problems.

    The results tend to leave little doubt about whether the school psychologists work for the schools or the children. It further leaves no doubt that the sorting machine is alive and well. Consider the presumed infallibility of the schools suggested by this outcome. Not one of 5000 failures is presumed to be caused by school practices.

    [snip]

    The arrogance of many administrators is not apparent in their personality. They may appear thoughtful, concerned, and open to suggestions. Their arrogance is in their decisions and their actions. Their actions reflect a fundamental lack of important values. Galen Alessi alluded to the problem with school psychologists: “Mere logic and research data will not change the role of school psychology, because the problem is not one of science but of values.”

    Source: War Against the Schools’ Academic Child Abuse by Siegfried Engelmann, page 65-6

11. I’d like to point out that in Alessi’s study nearly all of the school psychologists he interviewed agreed that curriculum, teaching, and administration could cause learning problems independently of child or family cause:

    “First, the psychologists were asked whether all agreed that each of the just-mentioned, five factors may play a primary role in a given school learning or behavior problem. They almost always agreed.”