Hot take: I think folks with kids who require more attention should pay more for the services. The line doesn't necessarily divide down special needs or not of course. Because there are plenty of special needs students who are lovely and cooperative, yes the class room needs are different from a general population for some things but not all - if we taught civics still, gym, art, music can be combined levels. Then you differentiate for the core subjects grouping students based on their needs and learning styles fortes acknowledging that some kids are brilliant, while others maybe just need a much slower pace and diff expectations. But ultimately if your kid is disruptive enough to require additional teacher resources, you pay more. The end.

Schools cannot make up for institutional poverty and parental neglect and lack of educational support in the home. Decades ago, they suspended and expelled disruptive students. Issues arose when the standard for disruptive was racist in some places and same behaviors in black boys got them suspended and in white boys, written off and ignored. The pendulum has swung too far into allowing everything for fear of discrimination. During the pandemic so many issues were revealed and since most of the teachers are women, many had to stay home with their own children and don't come back as well.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Put the disruptive kids in virtual public school and let the well behaved kids meet in person. Would cost virtually nothing and solve everything.

As long as you don't care about the kids, their families, or the impact to society when those kids get older.

Why are the parents not responsible here?

We could say the same thing about you. Pull your own kids out if you don't like inclusive public schools. NT kids are going to be much easier to homeschool or virtual school effectively than those with special needs.

Yeah, no. But keep it up with the attitude. The tides of public opinion are changing, and the laws, and, more importantly, judicial interpretations of the existing laws, will follow suit. Count on it.

DP

There's no evidence that there's broad support to segregate kids with special needs. If it had mainstream support, someone would be willing to openly advocate for it.

People might secretly like all kinds of discriminatory practices, but the inevitable backlash stops almost all of them from going anywhere as a matter of public policy. Democrats aren't going throw kids with special needs to the wolves, and Trumpers don't particularly care about this issue except to the extent they can use it to push for private school vouchers.

Shame on you for using the word segregate. Different kids have different needs.

Then you're going to have to convince people that separate can be equal, despite history to the contrary.

Proposing to prevent kids with special needs from going to school isn't going to help your case for that.

When these laws were created, people were thinking about dyslexia and kids in wheelchairs. They weren’t thinking about integrating kids who disrupt learning for all the other kids and give them PTSD from enduring classes with them every day. The laws need to be clarified. What people call a “disability” these days simply isn’t what people had in mind when they supported these laws. They would never have passed in this format if people knew that kids would be screaming in class and throwing chairs and there’d be literally nothing that anyone could do about it.

And most parents raising those kids WANT their kids out of gen ed and in more specialized placements. They are gaslighted and told it is "too expensive" or "we need more data to justify it."

I suspect there are very few on either side that like what the law has become.

NP. I think you'd be wrong. The poorly behaved kids' parents do not want their kids out of these classes. They don't think their kid has a problem. They are upset that school is not handling their kids' violent outbursts.

I think in general society doesn't know what to do with these kids. They aren't special needs or disabled. A lot of them just have bad home environments, suffer physical abuse at home and have zero attention given to them. What they need likely is military school where they live at the school with caring people. My neighbor's daughter went to one such school, but I'm pretty sure my neighbor had to pay $$$.

Responses I have heard from parents:
“He doesn’t do that at home. What are you doing wrong?” (Kid likely does whatever they want at home.)
“He should be in the regular classrooms.” (parents in denial)
“He is bored because you are not challenging him.” (Kid does no work and distracts others.)
“He doesn’t care about grades. He’s your problem. Why are you calling me?”
“You are the 5th teacher to call me today. It’s getting annoying.”
“Call his dad. They handle this stuff.”
Etc.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Put the disruptive kids in virtual public school and let the well behaved kids meet in person. Would cost virtually nothing and solve everything.

As long as you don't care about the kids, their families, or the impact to society when those kids get older.

Why are the parents not responsible here?

We could say the same thing about you. Pull your own kids out if you don't like inclusive public schools. NT kids are going to be much easier to homeschool or virtual school effectively than those with special needs.

Yeah, no. But keep it up with the attitude. The tides of public opinion are changing, and the laws, and, more importantly, judicial interpretations of the existing laws, will follow suit. Count on it.

DP

There's no evidence that there's broad support to segregate kids with special needs. If it had mainstream support, someone would be willing to openly advocate for it.

People might secretly like all kinds of discriminatory practices, but the inevitable backlash stops almost all of them from going anywhere as a matter of public policy. Democrats aren't going throw kids with special needs to the wolves, and Trumpers don't particularly care about this issue except to the extent they can use it to push for private school vouchers.

Shame on you for using the word segregate. Different kids have different needs.

Then you're going to have to convince people that separate can be equal, despite history to the contrary.

Proposing to prevent kids with special needs from going to school isn't going to help your case for that.

When these laws were created, people were thinking about dyslexia and kids in wheelchairs. They weren’t thinking about integrating kids who disrupt learning for all the other kids and give them PTSD from enduring classes with them every day. The laws need to be clarified. What people call a “disability” these days simply isn’t what people had in mind when they supported these laws. They would never have passed in this format if people knew that kids would be screaming in class and throwing chairs and there’d be literally nothing that anyone could do about it.

Yes, they were. IDEA isn't that old.

But they expected that schools would procide appropriate supports a services, generally first in gen ed classrooms while escalating to self-contained environments when necessary. That's where this fell apart. Schools and communities don't want to appropriately fund special education. So schools make this the gen-ed teachers' problems, knowing that it is effectively impossible for parents to win due process complaints under IDEA seeking more services.

So how much money is necessary to “appropriately fund special education” in your opinion? Let’s say an average normal student costs $8k to educate per year. How much more do you think taxpayers should be forced to pay for whatever you feel is owed to you as the parent of a kid with a special needs label?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Put the disruptive kids in virtual public school and let the well behaved kids meet in person. Would cost virtually nothing and solve everything.

As long as you don't care about the kids, their families, or the impact to society when those kids get older.

Why are the parents not responsible here?

We could say the same thing about you. Pull your own kids out if you don't like inclusive public schools. NT kids are going to be much easier to homeschool or virtual school effectively than those with special needs.

Yeah, no. But keep it up with the attitude. The tides of public opinion are changing, and the laws, and, more importantly, judicial interpretations of the existing laws, will follow suit. Count on it.

DP

There's no evidence that there's broad support to segregate kids with special needs. If it had mainstream support, someone would be willing to openly advocate for it.

People might secretly like all kinds of discriminatory practices, but the inevitable backlash stops almost all of them from going anywhere as a matter of public policy. Democrats aren't going throw kids with special needs to the wolves, and Trumpers don't particularly care about this issue except to the extent they can use it to push for private school vouchers.

Shame on you for using the word segregate. Different kids have different needs.

Then you're going to have to convince people that separate can be equal, despite history to the contrary.

Proposing to prevent kids with special needs from going to school isn't going to help your case for that.

When these laws were created, people were thinking about dyslexia and kids in wheelchairs. They weren’t thinking about integrating kids who disrupt learning for all the other kids and give them PTSD from enduring classes with them every day. The laws need to be clarified. What people call a “disability” these days simply isn’t what people had in mind when they supported these laws. They would never have passed in this format if people knew that kids would be screaming in class and throwing chairs and there’d be literally nothing that anyone could do about it.

And most parents raising those kids WANT their kids out of gen ed and in more specialized placements. They are gaslighted and told it is "too expensive" or "we need more data to justify it."

I suspect there are very few on either side that like what the law has become.

NP. I think you'd be wrong. The poorly behaved kids' parents do not want their kids out of these classes. They don't think their kid has a problem. They are upset that school is not handling their kids' violent outbursts.

I think in general society doesn't know what to do with these kids. They aren't special needs or disabled. A lot of them just have bad home environments, suffer physical abuse at home and have zero attention given to them. What they need likely is military school where they live at the school with caring people. My neighbor's daughter went to one such school, but I'm pretty sure my neighbor had to pay $$$.

I truly feel like schools are now taught to the lowest common denominator in every classroom. (My kids are not geniuses, so I'm not talking about mine) Gifted kids should have special classes and increased supports. We need the truly bright kids to be able to shine for the sake of society. Instead the whole class is focused on Johnny who is still leaning his ABCs.

-Get rid of the computers and bring back books.
-Have different classes based on kid academic strength. It's burning teachers out when they have 10 different levels of students in one class.
-Discipline for misbehaving students.
-Separate schools for extreme violent student behavior.

We live in America. Schools were tsh before the pandemic. It's called poverty and lack of proper funding to give working families stability for proper child development. Moreover, college is a super expensive gamble that hurts more people than it helps debt-wise.

All this bickering over juvenile criminal behavior and gross disruptions being allowed in public school is the death of public school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Put the disruptive kids in virtual public school and let the well behaved kids meet in person. Would cost virtually nothing and solve everything.

As long as you don't care about the kids, their families, or the impact to society when those kids get older.

Why are the parents not responsible here?

We could say the same thing about you. Pull your own kids out if you don't like inclusive public schools. NT kids are going to be much easier to homeschool or virtual school effectively than those with special needs.

Yeah, no. But keep it up with the attitude. The tides of public opinion are changing, and the laws, and, more importantly, judicial interpretations of the existing laws, will follow suit. Count on it.

DP

There's no evidence that there's broad support to segregate kids with special needs. If it had mainstream support, someone would be willing to openly advocate for it.

People might secretly like all kinds of discriminatory practices, but the inevitable backlash stops almost all of them from going anywhere as a matter of public policy. Democrats aren't going throw kids with special needs to the wolves, and Trumpers don't particularly care about this issue except to the extent they can use it to push for private school vouchers.

Shame on you for using the word segregate. Different kids have different needs.

Then you're going to have to convince people that separate can be equal, despite history to the contrary.

Proposing to prevent kids with special needs from going to school isn't going to help your case for that.

When these laws were created, people were thinking about dyslexia and kids in wheelchairs. They weren’t thinking about integrating kids who disrupt learning for all the other kids and give them PTSD from enduring classes with them every day. The laws need to be clarified. What people call a “disability” these days simply isn’t what people had in mind when they supported these laws. They would never have passed in this format if people knew that kids would be screaming in class and throwing chairs and there’d be literally nothing that anyone could do about it.

Yes, they were. IDEA isn't that old.

But they expected that schools would procide appropriate supports a services, generally first in gen ed classrooms while escalating to self-contained environments when necessary. That's where this fell apart. Schools and communities don't want to appropriately fund special education. So schools make this the gen-ed teachers' problems, knowing that it is effectively impossible for parents to win due process complaints under IDEA seeking more services.

Actually, kids who got Cs and Ds also went to college. My brother went to Penn State in Altoona with quite a few Cs and maybe Ds too. Back then, Cs weren't unusual. It meant that you met the standard. Now, an A means you met the standard. That's why there are so many kids with straight As. That was unusual back then. Add in retakes and it's now unusual to be getting Cs and Ds in public school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Put the disruptive kids in virtual public school and let the well behaved kids meet in person. Would cost virtually nothing and solve everything.

As long as you don't care about the kids, their families, or the impact to society when those kids get older.

Why are the parents not responsible here?

We could say the same thing about you. Pull your own kids out if you don't like inclusive public schools. NT kids are going to be much easier to homeschool or virtual school effectively than those with special needs.

Just close down all public schools and convert them all to virtual. Maybe that should be the free option.

Go right ahead and advocate for that. Let's see how far you get.

D-O-G-E

Elon and Vivek aren't coming to help you on that one. You're going to have to do it yourself.

But people loved virtual during the pandemic, right? Maybe parents will love to hop on board your virtual-for-all plan.

Well, maybe not the people who work. But how many people with kids really have to work?

We really only want this for the disruptive kids. It has broad support.

This attitude, by the way, is why disability rights advocates will fight to prevent any watering-down of the LRE provisions in IDEA. The people (anonymously) pushing for that aren't interested in actually providing separate programs that are equal in quality. It also means you'd immediately see 14th amendment challenges if anything snuck through.

What about the rights of the 95% of kids who are well behaved and just want to learn but cannot?

Just like it would be much easier for schools if they didn't have to worry about building ramps and elevators for kids with physical disabilities, or providing interpreters or special programs for kids with visual or auditory impairments.

Yes, disabilities can be challenging and expensive to accomodate. That's exactly why we have laws saying they must be accomodated.

Not the same at all. We are talking about disruptive/violent kids.

You'd need to determine whether the violent or disruptive behavior is a manifestation of a disability. If it is, you can't expel them from school as you're suggesting.

You just proved the point.

The needs of the majority matter less than the needs of the few.

Yes, we have laws that protect the rights of minorities, even when inconvenient or expensive. It isn't unique to education. This shouldn't be surprising to you.

No disability laws say that people with disabilities need to be accommodated to the point that they have exactly the same outcomes as non disabled people AT ALL COSTS, which is what you’re suggesting. A company for example can absolutely refuse to accommodate an employee if it’s deemed too expensive to do so in a reasonable way.

If school districts can show that they’re actually accommodating special needs kids with TWICE the money that they’re spending on other kids, and that they all start in gen ed until it’s clear that they are infringing on the rights of other students to receive an appropriate public education, then I don’t see how anyone could claim that people with disabilities are being discriminated against. Well I guess someone could claim it, but I don’t see any jury or reasonable judge agreeing with them about it.

You're right that outcomes don't have to be the same. Please show where I said that?

Everything else past that demonstrate a shocking lack of understanding of IDEA, ADA, and associated precedents. Nothing caps accomodation costs at twice the cost of students/employees/customers that do not have disabilities. And it's quite common that they do so, making it very hard to later claim that that they're unreasonable.

No judge or jury is going to let schools force students with special needs to virtual or home programs.

I understand you don't like to pay taxes, but this is reality. If you don't think violent and disruptive kids are being properly supporte and accomodated at schools, and think it is important to address that for the sake of the other kids in public schools, you're going to have to be willing to pay for better supports and accomodations.

But oddly, you seem more interested in making things worse for kids with special needs than you are making things better for students and teachers. And that's why your rants will never amount to anything.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm glad you started this thread. My oldest just finished first grade and I'm a bit shell shocked and overwhelmed. DH and I just can't imagine 11 more years of this. Our teachers have been good, it's just the problems they deal with daily are wild. The classroom spread is huge; one kid was basically a genius and another just came to America a few months ago, didn't know letters and couldn't speak english. The discipline problems are big too.

I remember schools being a magical place filled with bright students who liked to learn, but I was in Gifted. Every school had a regular, honors and then gifted classes, plus ESL for two years until kids learned English. They now have only one class for everyone, so the rich kids have fled to private or sold their homes and moved.

Oh, but we can’t have tracking anymore. That would make the lowest achieving kids (and, more importantly, their parents), Feel Bad.

Yes.

I also remember school being a magical place. I also remember that some kids got As, some got Bs, some got Cs, and some got Ds. You knew if you were an A or B student, you would go to college. You didn't stress out too much about which one. The C and D students were encouraged to take up a trade or go to community college. It was NORMAL. Now, we're pretending that everyone is or should be an A student, and pretending that everyone should go to college. I think this is part of what has wrecked everything.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Put the disruptive kids in virtual public school and let the well behaved kids meet in person. Would cost virtually nothing and solve everything.

As long as you don't care about the kids, their families, or the impact to society when those kids get older.

Why are the parents not responsible here?

We could say the same thing about you. Pull your own kids out if you don't like inclusive public schools. NT kids are going to be much easier to homeschool or virtual school effectively than those with special needs.

Yeah, no. But keep it up with the attitude. The tides of public opinion are changing, and the laws, and, more importantly, judicial interpretations of the existing laws, will follow suit. Count on it.

DP

There's no evidence that there's broad support to segregate kids with special needs. If it had mainstream support, someone would be willing to openly advocate for it.

People might secretly like all kinds of discriminatory practices, but the inevitable backlash stops almost all of them from going anywhere as a matter of public policy. Democrats aren't going throw kids with special needs to the wolves, and Trumpers don't particularly care about this issue except to the extent they can use it to push for private school vouchers.

Shame on you for using the word segregate. Different kids have different needs.

Then you're going to have to convince people that separate can be equal, despite history to the contrary.

Proposing to prevent kids with special needs from going to school isn't going to help your case for that.

When these laws were created, people were thinking about dyslexia and kids in wheelchairs. They weren’t thinking about integrating kids who disrupt learning for all the other kids and give them PTSD from enduring classes with them every day. The laws need to be clarified. What people call a “disability” these days simply isn’t what people had in mind when they supported these laws. They would never have passed in this format if people knew that kids would be screaming in class and throwing chairs and there’d be literally nothing that anyone could do about it.

And most parents raising those kids WANT their kids out of gen ed and in more specialized placements. They are gaslighted and told it is "too expensive" or "we need more data to justify it."

I suspect there are very few on either side that like what the law has become.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Put the disruptive kids in virtual public school and let the well behaved kids meet in person. Would cost virtually nothing and solve everything.

As long as you don't care about the kids, their families, or the impact to society when those kids get older.

Why are the parents not responsible here?

We could say the same thing about you. Pull your own kids out if you don't like inclusive public schools. NT kids are going to be much easier to homeschool or virtual school effectively than those with special needs.

Yeah, no. But keep it up with the attitude. The tides of public opinion are changing, and the laws, and, more importantly, judicial interpretations of the existing laws, will follow suit. Count on it.

DP

There's no evidence that there's broad support to segregate kids with special needs. If it had mainstream support, someone would be willing to openly advocate for it.

People might secretly like all kinds of discriminatory practices, but the inevitable backlash stops almost all of them from going anywhere as a matter of public policy. Democrats aren't going throw kids with special needs to the wolves, and Trumpers don't particularly care about this issue except to the extent they can use it to push for private school vouchers.

Shame on you for using the word segregate. Different kids have different needs.

Then you're going to have to convince people that separate can be equal, despite history to the contrary.

Proposing to prevent kids with special needs from going to school isn't going to help your case for that.

When these laws were created, people were thinking about dyslexia and kids in wheelchairs. They weren’t thinking about integrating kids who disrupt learning for all the other kids and give them PTSD from enduring classes with them every day. The laws need to be clarified. What people call a “disability” these days simply isn’t what people had in mind when they supported these laws. They would never have passed in this format if people knew that kids would be screaming in class and throwing chairs and there’d be literally nothing that anyone could do about it.