Perfect storm brewing in education
You have a child who doesn’t learn the way other children do. Maybe your child is autistic. Maybe your child processes information so slowly that comprehending what the teacher is saying is difficult. Maybe your child is mentally retarded. A perfect storm is brewing in America’s public schools, jeopardizing the education of such children. The federal government’s more demanding and costly educational requirements (including President Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” policies and new regulations for IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) are slamming head on into collapsing state budgets. The resulting threat to special-ed students in public schools is particularly bad in Oakland, Calif., but similar circumstances are happening throughout the country.
If you are the parent of a child who doesn’t have special needs, you may be wondering why you should care. Keep in mind that when disabled children are not provided the services they need, they languish in general education classrooms with your children. Your child’s teacher spends a disproportionate amount of time with the disabled child. The disabled child, who might be frustrated from not understanding the lessons or has horrible social skills, might be disruptive, thus interfering with your own child’s education.
And if special education kids – like all kids – don’t gain the skills they need to succeed in life, they are more likely to end up in jail or on the welfare rolls. You should care about special ed because all children are entitled to a fair chance to succeed in life. So back to Oakland, where the state recently took over management of the bankrupt school system and issued a $100 million emergency bailout loan. Special ed has become a leading scapegoat of the district’s enormous debt. The department overspent its budget, but so did the entire school district. There was a system-wide failure of budget controls. Yet, only the special-ed department has been wiped out. Vivian Lura, an innovative and respected advocate of disabled students, is out as director and reassigned to the classroom.
Even more worrisome for parents of Oakland’s special ed students is that Lura has been replaced by an administrator whose special education experience begins and ends with 12 semester credits in a doctoral program in 1991. Phyllis Harris, who had been director of new-teacher training, is suddenly expected to oversee the education of 6,000 special-ed students and make sure district schools are complying with the complex tangle of state and federal laws that govern special education.
“We’re worried,” one special-ed parent said. “We’re beyond worried.”
Randall Ward, who was appointed by the governor to replace ousted Oakland schools’ superintendent Dennis Chaconas, was so inundated with e-mail about special ed that he called a town-hall-type meeting. On the evening of his fourth day on the job, he listened and took notes as a packed audience of parents, teachers and special-ed advocates made the case that special education is too important and complex to be managed by inexperienced leaders in an attempt to cut costs. “I have no notion of trying to balance the budget on the backs of your children,” Ward told them.
Ward is widely respected as a wizard adept at serving both the accountants and the students. He surely understands the special-ed challenges in Oakland. The district is struggling with the local effects of a statewide 273 percent increase in autism over the past decade. It is serving a disproportionate number of special-ed children living in group and foster homes in Oakland. It is absorbing the startup costs of new programs that are designed to decrease the number of students the district now transfers into expensive, specialized non-public schools. Ward knows his mandate is not simply to cut costs. He must also provide every student with an opportunity to succeed. With their trusted special-ed director gone and an inexperienced administrator now in charge, the worried parents and teachers of Oakland’s most vulnerable students are echoing the inescapable question posed at the town-hall meeting: “I ask you, Dr. Ward, what’s going to happen to our kids?”
Joan Ryan is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Send comments to her in care of this newspaper or send her e-mail at joanryan sfchronicle.com.