Many children with disabilities don’t get the schooling they’re entitled to, but Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said Tuesday he’s committed to changing the status quo.
In a speech to hundreds of parents and educators attending a national special education conference, Duncan acknowledged the lengths that many parents must go to ensure that their children with disabilities get an appropriate education.
“Too many children with disabilities are not getting a world-class education. My message today is that I want to change that,” Duncan told attendees at a Department of Education sponsored conference in Arlington, Va. “Through a combination of policy, enforcement, technical assistance and, yes, investing in the power of parents, we are going to make good on the promise of a free, appropriate public education and ensure that all children are getting a world-class education.”
Duncan pointed to the administration’s efforts to integrate the needs of students with disabilities in their recent proposal for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, also known as No Child Left Behind. And, he said the department is working to align the updated education law with a forthcoming reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
What’s more, Duncan highlighted department efforts to establish new assessment tools to measure academic progress among students with cognitive disabilities for whom traditional fill-in-the-bubble tests may not offer an accurate reflection of skills.
Duncan acknowledged that the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights “has not been as vigilant as it should have been in protecting the rights of individuals with disabilities” in the last decade. But he said his staff has opened nine compliance reviews related to special education since March and is working with school districts to help them better understand their obligations.
Duncan candid re: special needs children? Not really. Every major civil rights group in the US opposes his pet initiatives:charters, for profit schools, and Race to the Top (RttT). Parents of special needs children should carefully evaluate how Charters and RttT interpret FAPE and LRE. We’ve worked for too many years to move to an inclusion model in public schools to loose those gains. The segregation effects of for profits are well documented. Students who are unable to take paper pencil tests, who require instruction outside the narrow boundaries of reading or math, who have behavioral disabilities, who require medical care, and any child who cannot raise standardized test scores are excluded. They are routinely counseled out or rejected outright.
Why does Duncan think his empty rhetoric would have any meaning for families of children with disabilities? The standards he has set are arbitrary and impossible for poor communities to achieve. He works from the faulty assumption that all children are the same. No mention of reducing class sizes, extensive yearlong internships for special education pre-service teachers, increased requirements for teaching assistants, improved curriculum with valid ecological assessments for children with special needs. Nothing.
His policies reject the science of learning and development. Instead they embrace a business model that enriches wealthy investors at the expense of our children.