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THOUSANDS OF STUDENTS WERE NOT TAUGHT TO READ, THEN LABELED DISABLED By Richard Lee Colvin & Duke Helfand TIMES STAFF WRITERS
CALIFORNIA-Tens of thousands of students in California's special
education system have been placed there not because of a serious
mental or emotional handicap, but because they were never taught
to read properly. Failed by mainstream classes and teachers,
they are then referred to special education and labeled "learning
disabled." There they are failed a second time, by a badly
flawed system designed to be their safety net.
The needless referrals and inadequate instruction for these children
are widely acknowledged by educators and officials but are rarely
addressed. As a result, public education costs have spiraled
upward and academic prospects have dimmed for otherwise bright
children sometimes described as "instructional casualties."
(A euphemism like "instructional casualties" takes
away the aspect of blame; instead of actual individuals with names
and faces guilty of neglect and negligence, we are left with the
impression that these students are random casualties, like the
victims of a war. WFI Editor)
"Learning disabilities have become a sociological sponge
to wipe up the spills of general education," said G. Reid
Lyon, who heads the federal government's research efforts into
reading and learning disabilities. "It's were children who
weren't taught well go in many respects." California has
651,000 special education students - about one in 10 public school
students. Of them, 18% suffer disabilities that include emotional
disturbance, mental retardation, and autism. Another 26% are
in special education because of speech and language impairments
such as stuttering. But more than half of special education students
are called "learning disabled," a catch-all category
primarily for children who have trouble reading. That category
has grown by 63% over the last 15 years.
Almost all of the students who have been designated as learning
disabled because of reading difficulties should not be in special
education at all, said Alice Parker, California's director of
special education. That's as many as 250,000 students statewide.
"They have not been taught how to read,"
Parker said. "And that is deplorable." Leading research
now shows that the reading problems most of those students suffer
from could have been reduced, or even avoided altogether, had
they received systematic, intensive instruction as early as kindergarten
in how letters represent sounds and how letters go together to
form words - the basis of phonics.
Beginning in the late 1980s, however, explicit lessons in phonics
were downplayed across the country. The reduction in such lessons
contributed to a steady rise in the number of students identified
as learning disabled, state officials now say. Many of them were
allowed to languish in regular classrooms until they slipped so
far behind their peers that their problems became serious. Misguided
teachers and administrators also contributed to the improper placement
of students in special education classrooms. Other teachers see
special education as an easy place to dump students with behavioral
difficulties.
"You have a kid with a problem, so the teacher says, 'Let's
ship him out of here and into special ed,'" said Alan Mori,
the dean of the school of education at Cal State Los Angeles.
A state task force that examined special education, however,
concluded that the biggest factor driving the dramatic growth
in the number of learning disabled students is poor general education
instruction, particularly in early reading. (What this means,
in plain English, is that the teachers are failing in their main
function, to educate youngsters. Think of that the next
time you are told that teachers are not paid enough. WFI
Editor)
A "significant number of children labeled learning disabled
or dyslexic could have become successful readers had they received
systematic and explicit instruction and intervention far earlier
in their educational careers," the task force concluded in
a report last month. Some children - experts say between 2% and
5% -- have such severe learning disabilities that they would need
extra help - and probably separate classes - no matter how effectively
regular classrooms were functioning. (Which means that 95 to
98% of all children do NOT need extra help, or separate classes,
to succeed in school, IF the classrooms functioned
properly. WFI Editor)
The law guaranteeing access to special education was enacted a
generation ago to help those children and others with emotional,
physical or mental disabilities. But for many, including those
with vaguely defined learning problems, it can become a trap of
inappropriately slowed-down instruction, lowered goals and a lifetime
of stigma. Schools and school districts, citing financial shortfalls,
regularly fail to provide the classroom aides, specialized materials
and extra services guaranteed by law to their special education
students.
Students in special education classrooms are three times more
likely to have untrained teachers. They are twice as likely to
drop out of school prior to graduation. And though special education,
in theory, is meant to give needy students extra help in catching
up to their peers, inadequate instructional methods often leave
them permanently behind; fewer than 10% of children who are saddled
with the label of learning disabled ever shed their special education
status.
TAXPAYERS PAY THE BILL
For taxpayers, the result is a hefty bill. School districts spend
an estimated $5,500 a year on special education services for each
learning disabled student, meaning the extra - and largely unnecessary
- costs to the system could run $ billion or more. "Everyone
knows the way we have been providing special education isn't working,"
said Janny Latno, a veteran special ed teacher in Vallejo and
a consultant to the state association that represents special
ed instructors.
"In some of our more dysfunctional school systems, there
will be chaos and lawsuits," said Kevin Feldman, director
of reading and early intervention for Sonoma County and a member
of the state task force that reviewed the link between special
ed and reading instruction. "That may be what it takes to
get our attention. That's the price we have to pay."
FLAWED SCREENING METHODS EXPOSED
Students in special education classes, whether they are labeled
as learning disabled or have a more serious disorder, are supposed
to be exposed to the same topics and ideas and held to the same
standards as their non-disabled peers. When most California fourth-graders
study the Spanish missions, their special education counterparts
are supposed to do the same, albeit through alternative methods.
And so, one recent day, the assignment in teacher Toni Cognein's
English class was for students to read "Tom Sawyer,"
the classic American novel required of all eighth-graders in the
Los Angeles Unified School District.
Yet with its colloquial language and dense vocabulary, the book
was far too difficult for Cognein's learning disabled students
at Marina Del Rey Middle School. So the teenagers listened to
the book on tape. They watched a movie based on the story. And
rather than read Mark Twain's actual prose, they used an abridged
version, with pictures, written at the fifth-grade level. Even
then, the students struggled to pronounce words such as "daintily"
and "superintendent" when they took turns reading the
novel aloud. "You work from where they are," Cognein
said.
Cognein's class is one of eight serving the school's 150 learning
disabled students, who account for 17% of the school's total enrollment.
"A lot of these kids weren't identified until fifth or sixth
grade," Cognein said. "It's really too late. Why does
that happen?" The reason for late identification is rooted
in the 1975 federal law that mandated special education programs
nationwide. The law said a disabled student is one who demonstrates
a disorder in the "basic psychological processes involved
in understanding or in using language." That manifests itself
as an "imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write,
spell, or… do mathematical calculations."
That definition drew on research which indicated that many students
who were falling behind in school had identifiable neurological
disorders or they misperceived letters. Because methods of observing
the brain in action were too crude to pinpoint dysfunctions, educators
developed an indirect method to measure unexplained gaps in performance:
Schools would give children an IQ test. Then they would measure
their reading performance. If the IQ test results were significantly
higher than the reading scores - meaning a student was bright
but could not read - a child would be designated disabled.
"It's not like diagnosing cancer or heart cancer," said
Thomas Hehir, the former director of special ed programs for the
U.S. Department of Education and now a lecturer at the Harvard
Graduate School of Education. "It's not science. There
are lots of kids with reading problems who are not learning disabled."
Hehir and other leading researchers now argue that the method
is fundamentally flawed. Because achievement tests measure academic
skills, the gap between intelligence and performance doesn't show
up reliably until the third or fourth grade. That's too late
for most students to catch up. For those who are not identified
until third grade, 75% continue to experience reading difficulties
through high school, according to research funded by the National
Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Moreover, the intelligence tests themselves are notoriously inaccurate
and are so similar to the achievement tests that any gaps between
the two results from testing error rather than actual differences,
said Lou Danielson, a top researcher with the U.S. Dept. of Education.
Nonetheless, in most schools the method of identifying students
for special education is embraced by psychologists, teachers and
principals.
NEITHER SPECIAL OR EDUCATIONAL
The fact that many students are being placed in special education
programs unnecessarily would be less of a problem if those programs
truly provided effective services. Often, however, special education
is neither very special, nor educational. Since their creation,
special education programs have not been held to answer for the
results they produce. Instead, they have been measured by whether
they adhere to complicated procedural rules. (Special education
has become the "dumping ground" for students
lazy and uneducated teachers don't want to be bothered with because
they are the harder educational cases. That certainly
is the underlying message one must derive from the practice of
placing students that simply cannot read into classes that were
meant for genuinely physically and mentally handicapped individuals.
Additionally, the teachers' unions made it difficult to challenge
these practices without making waves, which no one in any bureaucracy
is encouraged to do. WFI Editor)
The special education system remains one that is extremely costly,
but with little accountability. Nationally, special education
costs about $43 billion, providing services to 5.2 million children
and adults from birth to 22 years of age. The cost has risen
rapidly in recent years. Congress envisioned the federal government
covering 40% of those costs with states picking up the rest.
But the federal purse has covered only about 12% of what was spent.
This year, local California districts will kick in about $1.3
billion for special education, taking it from funds meant to pay
for general education services. (No wonder kids graduating from
high school can't read. WFI Editor) The state
pays $2.2 billion. Citing those financial constraints, school
districts often argue that they cannot afford to meet the needs
of special education students without shortchanging those in regular
classrooms.
SERVICES FALL SHORT
In many school districts, however, services for special education
students fall far short of student needs. Special education classrooms
often are relegated to the fringes of schoolyards. At some schools,
they are taught in cramped teacher lounges; when the state's class-size
reduction program went into effect, increasing the demand for
classrooms, special education teachers were displaced and many
were forced to go from room to room to teach. (But that didn't
stop the school districts from taking the $2.2 BILLION from the
state; in short, where is the money going? Pension funds? WFI
Editor)
Teachers say they often lack materials designed for their students'
needs, forcing them to cobble together a hodgepodge of books that
are too difficult or outdated. The problem leaps out at Lane
Elementary School in Monterey Park, where learning disabled students
in one classroom use 10-year-old reading books produced at the
height of the whole language movement and a set of fraying phonics
texts published in 1966. A teacher found both sets, bound by
yarn, in the school's dusty storage room. "We're always
last in line for getting materials," said one of Lane's special
ed teachers.
Moreover, most special education teachers do not receive any more
training in how to teach reading than do other teachers. The
result, many critics say, is that students often do not get the
highly structured lessons that experts say they need most. Making
those problems worse, nearly one in three California teachers
assigned to special education duties - as many as 9,000 - lack
full credentials, according to one study. By comparison, one
in ten general education teachers statewide lacks a credential.
"We're hiring anyone off the street who will fill a classroom,"
said Ron Pinsky, director of special services for the North Monterey
County Unified School District, where one third of the 21 special
education teachers lack credentials. "There are far easier
teaching jobs that pay the same." Veterans are fleeing special
education, trading their pressure cooker assignments for easier
jobs in regular classrooms and creating yet more holes to fill,
leading educators to say. The exodus has been exacerbated by
the state's popular class-size reduction program, which has created
new opportunities for teachers in regular classrooms. "That's
happening all over," Pinsky said. (Of course, with a little
imagination the federal government could make it a requirement
of teachers' who received their teaching credentials with the
aid of government loans, that they contribute a minimum number
of years teaching special ed before they can receive plum tenured
positions. Furthermore, the more difficult teaching assignments
of special ed should be considered a required part of a teacher's
work experience, before they are allowed to teach in regular classrooms,
so that their real skills as teachers are actually put the test.
WFI Editor) Anna Rubin is among the newcomers filling the empty special education slots. Three months into her job at Polytechnic High School in Long Beach, California, Rubin, 27, is frustrated by the bumpy road. The district gave Rubin just two days of training - covering topics such as managing her classroom and filling out paperwork for individual education plans - before signing her to room 31 of the sprawling campus near downtown Long Beach. The English and history teacher has since discovered that the textbooks in her room are useless for her students, who read about as well as 8- and 9-year-olds. Rubin knows that academics don't come easy to her students. One of them took an hour and 15 minutes to compose five sentences using his vocabulary words. As she helped him, four others all but ignored their assignment, telling jokes and cursing at each other. SOURCE: Excerpted from the 12 December, 1999, issue of the Los Angeles Times, Orange County Edition, from an article entitled, "Special Education in State Is Failing on Many Fronts." Reprinted in the public service of the national interest of the American people.(WFI EDITOR: Education is largely dependent upon the ability to read. Once an individual is endowed with the skill to read, and to comprehend abstract ideas, he or she is enabled. The individual is empowered to go forth into the world and seek out the kind of education that will make it possible for him or her to make a contribution to the community, the nation and the human race. The purpose of public education is not to convert children into obedient voter-taxpayers, who conceive of their role in the society as fundamentally submissive. Submissive to a republic and its collateral institutions that are the captives of the upper classes, and their physical control and ownership of the majority of the property in America. The purpose most parents think the school system should serve is to make their children educated sufficiently that they can become independent members of a civilized society.
The existing school system is a bureaucracy that is built
into the grid of bureaucracies that run the United States; however,
these bureaucracies are not all public or governmental bureaucracies.
Most political power in the United States was privatized by the
Founding Fathers using the republic they created out of thin blue
air. The protections of law that existed under the ancient constitution
were suspended, and the inalienable legal rights individuals were
traditionally born with in Anglo-American civilization, now became
the privileges held out by the successors to the Founding Fathers,
the Billionaire Class, with all the strings attached that guaranteed
that Americans under the republic would never be genuinely free.
Knowledge is power, but so is property. By deploying institutional
power against individuals, we have been forcibly compelled into
forms of employment and compensation, and credit and debt, that
indenture us for a lifetime. The notion that there is free enterprise
in America is a fiction, because even the money exchanged in America
is not free of the political influence of the republic. Through
the ruse of "private corporations," power has been shifted
from institutions of political accountability, like king and parliament,
to institutions that are wholly under the control of the private
corporations, like the Presidency of the Republic, the Congress,
and the judicial system of the United States.
One of the hardest sources of evidence that the corruption
under the governmental system of the republic of the United States
is universal and irreversible, exists in the public school system.
The United States spends more on education than most of the civilized
countries in the world, yet students are not taught to read, and
then they are shuffled into "special ed" classes where
they don't belong. The teachers conceal their failures through
passing off students they failed to teach, into classes that condemn
them to lifetimes of stigma, and the whole system costs American
taxpayers billions of dollars a year. Then anyone who suggests
that perhaps teachers and schools should be held accountable for
failing to fulfill their functions, is immediately attacked for
having no sympathy for the CHILDREN! If only the existing funds
allocated to public education WERE SPENT ON THE CHILDREN!
Think of that! And if you want to investigate why kids are not
learning how to read and write, or perform basic math functions,
you better not hire the school districts or teachers' unions to
perform the research, because their answers are always that NOT
ENOUGH MONEY IS BEING SPENT! While the products of the money
that is being spent - the children who are not learning
to read or write - are turning into frustrated sociopaths who
steal illegal firearms and use them in outbursts of anger and
rage upon their unwitting school mates. The one thing no bureaucracy
will ever do is TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE CONSEQUENCES OF ITS
POLICIES. The United States is in genuine need of reform. Playing politics every four years is not going to save this nation. Political debates for points also will not delay the ruination of our civilization. Something precious to Americans was taken from them, and their descendants - US - are suffering from the loss of those precious, ancient inalienable legal rights to individual freedom. Only once we become individually educated sufficiently to understand how we were cheated by the foundation of the republic, and how we will be protected by the restoration of the ancient constitution, will we be equipped with the knowledge we need to defend our freedom. Then, and only then, will we have the knowledge that is power, that will give us the unity and solidarity needed to overcome the republic of the prison. For only then shall we REALLY understand how the public education we acquired at public expense, was used against us, to the advantage of the police state, the dream-child of the Founding Fathers.)
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