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Anonymous wrote:Counties hide behind LRE to act like it’s the legal requirement for a certain child. In reality mainstream classes are just cheaper. Self-contained is way more expensive so they try to keep anyone they can mainstream. Even if the classroom teacher and the sped teacher and the parents agree the placement is not working, the county will fight it. I’ve seen it happen.
Private schools are failing because of this. Parents will not use them and vote to defund them. It is a death spiral.
You know what is also expensive? TJ. But the school board finds the money to help the advanced kids get even more advanced. They found the money for that. So the kids who are just normal are in the classroom with the disruptive kids and the majority go downhill because they don't have the same advocacy power.
What mainstreaming does is turn regular classrooms into special education classrooms, but it is the wrong fit for everyone.
+1
Schools need SPED rooms, but the SPED parents fight it.
"Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!"
Safety from violence for children in school now, tomorrow and forever!
YES
Get kids the help they need, dammit.
Where were these issues 30, 40, 50 years ago? What has changed?
30, 40, 50 years ago we didn’t provide schooling for these kids. They were either kicked out of school and their parents responsibility or they were sent to “schools” that were essentially warehousing kids and providing little to no education. Also, most of the diagnoses that exist today did not exist then. That doesn’t mean that the conditions didn’t exist but that we wrote them off as kids being stupid or low IQ, for LDs, class clowns or very active kids, for ADHD, and kids with Autism and the like probably never even made it into school.
Today there is a requirement to educate everyone. That includes providing school for kids who are low IQ and not able to learn. There are classrooms at every school for kids who will not learn to read or do math. Normally these classrooms are self contained and the kids are not destructive. They are kids and they are hopefully developing social skills and learning some skills that will help them live their lives as adults.
Kids with LDs and no behavioral issues can be helped with reading and math interventions but many times the schools do a crap job with that. There are not enough educators with the necessary training to help the non-violent kids who need specialized instruction, like OG for reading or scribing for dysgraphia. Friends with kids who have IEPs for LDs regularly tell stories of basic accommodations being ignored.
Toss in kids with emotional dysregulation due to a mental health issue or ADHD or Autism or Sensory issues and you are dealing with kids who cannot control their emotions for a wide variety of reasons. We have a good number of Teachers who are not trained in how to work with kids like this. Because of past issues with abuse, laws have changed that prevent Teachers or Staff from physically restraining kids or moving kids from the room, which is why rooms are evacuated and kids are left to destroy things.
In the past we labeled kids and just brushed them to the side. Today we realize that many of the kids with disabilities can be educated and can become productive adults. If we provide the kids with the proper supports and help, we can decrease the number of adults in jail or receiving assistance from the government. It should be less expensive to society to help kids with disabilities. The problem is that we do not fund the programs properly. We don’t pay the Teachers in these much harder and challenging positions enough to entice people to those positions. We don’t have the specialized schools and rooms available to be able to help the kids who need the help. We are relying on Teachers without the proper training to educate these kids and they simply do not have the resources or education to do so.
Federal law requires we educate all kids but doesn’t provide the funding that is needed to actually achieve this goal. Poor families with limited education don’t realize what services their kids should receive. Well off families with more moderate issues, like LDs and ADHD, maybe Autism 1, can afford, or at least make it work, the specialized schools to help their kids. Well off families with kids with more serious issues know that there are not specialized schools for their kids and know that the only route for them is the Public School system. They can afford the lawyers and advocates to get their kids IEPs with expensive accommodations, which the Federal Government has mandated be provided.
We have a crappy situation that is caused by an unfunded mandate by the Federal Government, with good intentions, that has left local Public Schools unable to meet the needs of a small percentage of kids that leads to the rare event of kids throwing chairs and being violent in a Gen Ed classroom. It scares the crap out of the parents of the kids in the class, for good reason. It is complicated and sad for all.