“Eddies” are those wonderful little spots in streams and rivers where waters simply swirl round-and-round and never seem to get anywhere. A leaf might spend an eternity in an eddy: given time, an oxbow lake might grow from an eddy.
So too are our special education students! Stuck in a current at variance with the “normal” educational stream – they can swirl round-and-round in the education system with their Woodcock/Johnsons and tri-annual evaluations…and all-of-them are victims of P.L. 19-142!
As I suggested – this public edict came about at the behest of the powerful lobby of parents with handicapped children. And what began with cerebral palsies and Down Syndrome types – quickly swelled with new diagnoses such as A.D.D. and S.E.D. (severely emotionally disturbed). PLEASE RECALL that there was no substantive research for these diagnostic categories emerging from special education…indeed, special education flew “by the seat of its pants.” But as I write this OP-ED – A.D.H.D. has finally reached “disease” status after it’s posting in the DSM IV in 1994.
A.D.H.D. is NOT a disease (as I have noted previously)! It is a socio-political construct — that keeps many people employed when a child simply can’t learn in the same lock-step fashion that Joe and Jane Normal can. And herein-lies-the-rub: putting an elevator into a high school so that a wheel-chair bound student can reach the second level — is a one-time, large expenditure — that is not that difficult to maintain over time. But if you are going to diagnose a child with A.D.H.D. as a 6-or-7-year-old, and, maintain their IEP (individualized education plan) into college, with an ever-changing array of gaggling, self-proclaimed experts on learning disabilities; not to mention the drug therapies associated with these learning disabilities (and heaven forbid that some psychiatrist miss the cross-over effect that Ritalin can have in pubescence) –you have a capital outlay that no school or school-system can bear – particularly when so many additional children are receiving labels (and meds) on a daily basis. Isn’t it easier for two working parents, or, divorced parents in single, or split-family living arrangements to have a disease model explain their child’s struggles – than for these self-same parents to sit down and find out why their child is struggling in school and have a less invasive intervention than meds procure?!
The cost of special education has already knifed into the budget of the American public schools, and, sooner-or-later (probably sooner) – it will lobotomize the psyche of that once noble institution: the American public school — and when it does — many more American public school children than ever imagined …will…be…left…behind…