| Reforming
Special Education. . . Again
by
Michelle Accorso
 How
can we best serve the city’s neediest children? That was the
question posed to the diverse array of panelists at a recent
special education hearing housed at the New School. Panelists
included Jill Chaifetz, an attorney for children’s rights,
Debbie Edwards-Anderson, whose youngest son, Jabari, was diagnosed
5 years ago with a learning disability, Carmen Farina, Regional
Superintendent of Instructional Leadership Division 8, Alan
Gartner, noted expert in special education issues, and Jill
Levy, a noted educator and advocate for children with special
needs as well as President of the Council of School Supervisors
and Administrators (CSA). The Moderator, Liz Willen, has covered
public education in New York City since 1992 and is most known
for her career at New York Newsday where she won four
awards from the Education Writer’s Association.
The
panelists, though all from different backgrounds, all seemed
to agree on one important matter…finding the best and badly
needed way to help children with learning disabilities receive
the best education possible.
The
discussion, which revolved around Children First (not to be
confused with No Child Left Behind), was aimed at the reorganization
of Special Education personnel. The overall number of Committees
on Special Education (CSEs) will be reduced from 37 to 10 in
order to align the CSEs with the school system’s new structure
of 10 Instructional Leadership Divisions.
“To
put this issue in perspective,” Willen said, “this is a school
system of 1.1 million children, 1,101 schools, and serves 145,000
kids in special ed from ages 5 to 21 with all kinds of special
needs including the most fragile and vulnerable of the city’s
students.”
Willen
then turned the discussion over to the panel of experts, starting
first with Alan Gartner who expressed his frustration with
the current state of special education. “We found extraordinary
disproportionate themes in terms of minority students in special
education,” he said, “We also found a great deal of redundancy…things
that were done in one level were continued on to the next.
We also found an extraordinary amount of separation between
general education and children with disabilities.”
Gartner
didn’t just focus on the current situation with special education.
He brought to the attention of the attendees a federal law
passed back in 1975 titled Education for all Handicapped
Children. “The most important word in that title is all,” Gartner
said. Congress, in an act of faith, said “we believe that the
children are capable of learning. We believe education is so
powerful, and that the people who work in education, (the teachers,
principals and administrators), are so powerful that they can
make a difference for the full range of children.”
Jill
Levy, who has been instrumental in the passage of several state
laws, was the next panelist to speak. A mother of a child with
a learning disability herself, Levy’s passion is obvious when
discussing the issues of special education. Levy drew our attention
to a more personal view: “I had a discussion with my daughter
and son the other night and asked them how they want to be
treated,” Levy explained, “They want to be treated like everybody
else is treated. They want to have respect, they want to have
dignity, and they want to be able to deal with their own issues
in their own way. And they want to be accepted in the social
world as well, as individuals. They want what you and I want.”
This
may seem obvious, but as Levy stressed, the labels we are given
as children by psychiatrists, counselors, etc. are labels that
can stick and unfortunately hinder what a child’s true potential
may actually be. As Levy stated herself, “I myself am not special
ed, at least I don’t think so. I wasn’t labeled as such as
a child.”
“Who
are we talking about when we talk about children with special
needs?” Levy asked, “We’re lumping them all together in a definition
of children with special needs. Every one of those children,
like every child, is a unique, independent individual. Some
of who have greater needs, or greater strategies or different
strategies than others. I’ve paid exceptional attention to
the term of lumping kids with special needs together. We need
to understand that we are talking about children who have very
little cognitive ability whatsoever to children who are extraordinarily
bright but they have diversified needs within that and yet
we use the lump standard. If we do not recognize that and really
address that in this plan or any other, then we are losing
the whole idea of serving all children and their diversities.”
Carmen
Farina, who oversees 143 schools, spoke next about reforms
taking place within the school districts of New York City. “I
think that this issue is a philosophical one as well as a legal
one. You can follow the rules and meet the needs or you can
really believe that all kids can learn and then you see this
in a very different way.”
“I’m
happy to say that we have started in our district, now our
region, one of the first classes for autistic students,” Farina
continued, “We are starting a school for Asperger’s syndrome.
As Jill was saying, it’s absolutely true that all kids are
not the same, everyone has a different need.” She continued
by saying that special education classes should not stand out
in a way that makes children feel different from their peers. “The
only difference I should see in a special education classroom
is that it’s smaller,” Farina said.
Jill
Chaifetz, an attorney and advocate for special education needs,
discussed some of the issues brought to her attention daily
by parents of children with special needs. “We rarely have
parents call and say, ‘Everything’s great. Just wanted to tell
you.’ What we hear instead is what is not going well. So what
we try to do is individually serve those parents. Some of the
most intensive work we do is with parents of kids with disabilities.
The new organization has been an extremely interesting time
at my office. Either the glass is half full or half empty,
depending on how you look at it. Listening to Alan before I
was shaking my head realizing that most of us on this panel
are in the same place in terms of what we want to have happen,
which is actually pretty radical. For many years, there were
chancellors that were not interested in change and special
education children’s rights and needs were not addressed in
any substantial manner.”
The
panel discussion at the New School indicated that reforming
special education is an ongoing job. Though we may still be
far from where we want to be, it’s obvious that the issue of
special education is now being taken seriously.#
Education
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