Kintropy In Action

I originally wrote the following response as a please-publish commentary for The Oregonian.  It was not published, but, hey, that's the advantage of having a blog, right?

The context was that The Oregonian had published a series of articles and letters regarding public school drop-out rates and special education.  The letter that really drove me nuts came from a fomer special-education assistant who had the following to say (Oregonian, Friday, April 11):

"When I became Tigard School District's first special education assistant in 1979, I worked in a program that was a huge success. We taught the kids with a program that put mainstreamed students in regular classes with modified work from the special education teacher (other students didn't have to know) and those who needed it were in contained special classes, except for physical education and electives.

We taught them to ride the bus, cook and [perform] other living skills. Those with emotional problems had special coping-skills classes. We had special math, English, science and social studies classes at levels students excelled at.

We didn't have any severely handicapped students who were there merely for socialization.

By the time I retired in 2000, we had "mainstreaming" and an overload of students being integrated merely for social time. This took time from those who were able to learn.

Severely disabled students who should be in a specialized environment created to teach them skills they need are now in public schools where they languish.

The federal law giving them the right to a "free and appropriate" education has harmed, not helped, all special education students. It is time to rethink the system.

DONNA NESBITT Tigard"

Here was my response:

Special education isn’t a place.  It is a set of services that support a child’s academic learning and self-empowerment.  I should know.  I am a former special education student.

In the mid-1970s, I enrolled in kindergarten at a public elementary school in Southern California.  This school was experimenting with something called “mainstreaming.”  Every child, those with diagnoses and those without, had an individual educational plan (IEP) to provide the right resources and level of instruction to match his abilities. 

My parents had chosen this school to support my older brother who was born with spina bifdia and a cognitive disability, but when I was evaluated, I, too, earned special education services.  A string-the-beads fine motor skills test was my ticket to adaptive physical education.  It capped a long string of observations my parents, one of whom was a special education teacher, had made about my sensitivity to touch, speech delays, and motor skills:  I had an (albeit undiagnosed) disability.

My IEP, however, didn’t constrain me to a self-contained classroom; it provided me with individualized supports.  For speech, I spent a little time working with a speech therapist.  For exercise, I left my homeroom classmates and joined my friends in adaptive physical education.  For reading, I moved to my older sister’s classroom.  That’s right:  by kindergarten, I was devouring books well above my grade level.  My IEP comprehended both my disabilities and my strengths and placed me accordingly.

I was not a burden on the system; neither were my classmates.  We supported each other.  I remember learning the art of conversation from Vince.  He typed into the keypad attached to his wheelchair’s arm; it spit out a ticker-tape like message.  I had to wait patiently for my turn to speak.  I would read his message aloud and respond.  He would smile, maybe vocalize, and start typing again.  We conversed.  We were equals. 

It amazes me that much of what we had right in the 1970s is still being debated, and in some cases discarded, here in 2008.  The fundamental guarantee of a free and public education carries an Animal Farm-like asterisk that some kids are more equal than others.

To me, this segregation of children is unacceptable.  In addition to all my personal history, my four-year-old daughter, Hannah, was born with a cognitive disability.  We had an opportunity to place Hannah in a self-contained preschool thirty minutes away.  We passed.  Instead, we worked with our IFSP team and our local preschool to lay a path for Hannah’s inclusion with her peers and her community.

Who knows what the future holds for my daughter, Hannah?  All I know is that the system I benefited from in the 1970s, where each student was “special” and supported according to his strengths and needs, had it right.  That is the map I am using to navigate the special education maze with my daughter.  Through it, I look forward to helping her employ her free and public academic education to discover and develop her strengths.

***

-- Dad