Hosted by The Center for
Education Reform
Hosted by The Center for
Education Reform
THE TRADE-OFF FOR SPECIAL ED
By John R. Silber
The Boston Globe, February 11, 1998
All children are special. This is not a sentimental truism but a realistic appreciation of the undoubted fact that no two people are identical. I know this not merely as someone who helped to raise nine children but as someone who has taught thousands of students. Each child in our schools is a special-needs child.
Their special needs differ. Some suffer handicaps, whether physical or mental. Others with exceptional gifts experience the average class as a period of devastating boredom. Others have both gifts and handicaps. And even those we carelessly call "average" are wondrously diverse.
Our Commonwealth was the birthplace of the American public school. It is not surprising that the state of Horace Mann is deeply concerned for special education. Although our intentions are the best, we must remember that the best intentions can have unintended and disastrous consequences. This has been the case with special education in Massachusetts.
The present Massachusetts standard for the provision of special education is that once children are identified as having special needs, they are entitled to education services that will assure them "maximum possible development."
If, contrary to fact and possibility, the Commonwealth's resources were unlimited, this standard would be not only reasonable but admirable. It would not matter that this standard leads to spiraling costs of special education. But since resources are limited, it does matter. The Commonwealth's special-needs children are just as precious to us as all its other children. But we cannot make them more precious without making others less precious.
Under the Commonwealth's present standard for special education, 17 percent of our children statewide are classified as having special needs, compared with 11 percent nationwide. Moreover, 20 percent of the Commonwealth's education budget goes to children with special needs - the highest in the nation. All told, 25 percent of the children in Cambridge are classified as having special needs.
Since becoming chairman of the Board of Education, I have visited dozens of our school districts. And in every district, principals and superintendents have told me that the uncontrolled costs of special education reduce their budgets to chaos. The "maximum possible development" standard means that there is no effective cap on the costs of educating any student who has been diagnosed as having special needs. This utopian standard allows an ingenious attorney full latitude in defining special needs and in proposing programs of education to meet them.
The present standard subverts not merely special education but all education. Legislation before the General Court would adopt the standard used by the federal government and 49 states: "free and appropriate education," or FAPE. No student should have less than this, and in order that none has less, none should have more.
Unfortunately, against a forceful plea by Harold Lane, its chairman, the Joint Committee on Education rejected the federal standard this week. Lane assessed their move with telling accuracy: "A bill that does not move us to the federal standard cannot truly be said to be reform at all. . . .
"The central tension between regular and special education will remain as long as there is a standard in place for special education that is utopian in nature. I am convinced that students of moderate to severe disability will not be affected by the move to the federal standard, but those students whose disabilities do not preclude learning in less restrictive environments will be reassigned under 'FAPE' in a way that is educationally superior to the placement they now receive."
The joint committee decided instead to perpetuate the crisis in special education by calling for another study, thereby sidetracking reform. Whatever the intention of yet another study, it will not alter the facts, but it will inevitably serve as a delaying tactic. It would make much better sense to implement the reasonable changes that were proposed and then use the additional study to monitor the results.
Additional years of business as usual in special education will allow costs to spin further out of control and will threaten the entire education reform effort in Massachusetts. No one will profit from this, least of all our handicapped children. The sooner we face reality, the better we will serve all our children.
It is imperative that Senate President Thomas Birmingham and House Speaker Thomas Finneran heed the counsel of Chairman Lane and the unanimous recommendation of the Board of Education by restoring the language of the federal standard.
No children with special needs will be ignored by conforming to the federal standard. Without that standard, there will be no meaningful reform of special education.
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John R. Silber is Chairman of the State Board of Education.