Perhaps the most significant and pervasive issue in special education and my journey in education is special education’s relationship to general education. History has shown that this has never been an easy, clear-cut relationship between the two. There has been a lot of giving and taking, or maybe I should say pulling and pushing when it comes to educational policy and the educational practices and services of education and special education by human educators. They deliver those services on both sides of the aisle, like me.
Over the last 20+ years, I have been on both sides of education. I have seen and felt what it was like to be a regular foremost stream educator dealing with particular education policies, special education students, and specialized teachers. I have also been on the specific education side, trying to get regular education teachers to work more effectively with my special education students by modifying their instruction and materials and having more patience and empathy.
Furthermore, I have been a mainstream regular education teacher who taught regular education inclusion classes, trying to figure out how to best work with some new special education teachers in my class and their special education students. And in contrast, I have been a special education inclusion teacher intruding on the territory of some regular education teachers with my special education students and the modifications I thought these teachers should implement. I can tell you that none of this give-and-take between special education and regular education has been easy. Nor do I see this pushing and pulling becoming easy anytime soon.
So, what is special education? And what makes it so unique and yet so complex and controversial sometimes? Well, special education, as its name suggests, is a specialized branch of education. It claims its lineage to such people as Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard (1775-1838), the physician who “tamed” the “wild boy of Aveyron,” and Anne Sullivan Macy (1866-1936), the teacher who “worked miracles” with Helen Keller.
Special educators teach students with physical, cognitive, language, learning, sensory, and emotional abilities that deviate from the general population. Special educators provide instruction specifically tailored to meet individualized needs. These teachers make education more accessible to students who otherwise would have limited access to education due to whatever disability they are struggling with.
It’s not just the teachers who play a role in this country’s special education history. Physicians and clergy, including Itard- mentioned above, Edouard O. Seguin (1812-1880), Samuel Gridley Howe (1801-1876), and Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet (1787-1851), wanted to ease the neglectful, often abusive treatment of individuals with disabilities. Sadly, education in this country was, more often than not, very neglectful and abusive when dealing with different students.
Even rich literature in our nation describes the treatment provided to individuals with disabilities in the 1800s and early 1900s. Sadly, in these stories and the real world, the segment of our population with disabilities was often confined in jails and almshouses without decent food, clothing, personal hygiene, and exercise.
For an example of this different treatment in our literature, one must look no further than Tiny Tim in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (1843). In addition, people with disabilities were often portrayed as villains, such as in the book Captain Hook in J.M. Barrie’s “Peter Pan” in 1911. The prevailing view of the authors of this period was that one should submit to misfortunes as a form of obedience to God’s will and because these seeming misfortunes are ultimately intended for one’s good. Progress for our people with disabilities was hard to come by with this way of thinking permeating our society, literature, and thinking.
So, what was society to do about these people of misfortune? During much of the nineteenth Century and early in the twentiCenturyofessionals believed individuals with disabilities were best treated in residential facilities in rural environments. An out-of-sight, out-of-mind kind of thing, if you will. However, by the end of the nineteenth Century, the size of these instCenturys had increased so dramatically that the goal of rehabilitation for people with disabilities wasn’t working. Institutions became instruments for permanent segregation.
I have some experience with these segregation policies of education. Some of it is good, and some of it is not so good. You see, I have been a self-contained teacher on and off throughout the years in multiple environments in self-contained classrooms in public high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools. I have also taught in various special education behavioral self-contained schools that separated these troubled students with disabilities in managing their behavior from their mainstream peers by putting them in completely different buildings that were sometimes even in other towns from their homes, friends, and peers.
Over the years, many special education professionals became critics of the institutions above that separated and segregated our children with disabilities from their peers. Irvine Howe was one of the first to advocate taking our youth out of these massive institutions and placing residents into families. Unfortunately, this practice became a logistical and pragmatic problem, and took a long time before it could become a viable alternative to institutionalization for our students with disabilities.
Now on the positive side, you might be interested in knowing, however, that in 1817 the first special education school in the United States, the American Asylum for the Education and Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb (now called the American School for the Deaf), was established in Hartford, Connecticut, by Gallaudet. TA’s true success story! Hat School is still there today and is one of the top schools in the country for students with auditory disabilities. However, as you can already imagine, the lasting success of the American School for the Deaf was the exception and not the rule during this period. And to add to this, in the late nineteenth Century, social Darwinism replaCenturyironmentalism as the primary causal explanation for those individuals with disabilities who deviated from those of the general population.
Sadly, Darwinism opened the door to the eugenics movement of the early twentieth Century. This led to even Century segregation and even sterilization of individuals with disabilities such as mental retardation. It sounds like something Hitler was doing in Germany is also being done right here in our own country, to our people, by our people. Scary and inhumane, wouldn’t you agree?
Today, this kind of treatment is unacceptable. And in the early part of the 20th Century, it was also unacceptablCenturyme of adults, especially the parents of these disabled children. Thus, concerned and angry parents formed advocacy groups to help bring the educational needs of children with disabilities into the public eye. The public had to see firsthand how wrong this eugenics and sterilization movement was for our students that were different if it was ever going to be stopped.
Slowly, grassroots organizations made progress, even leading to some states creating laws to protect their citizens with disabilities. For example, in 1930, in Peoria, Illinois, the first white cane ordinance gave individuals with blindness the right-of-way when crossing the street. This was a start, and other states did eventually follow suit. In time, this local grassroots and conditions movement put enough pressure on our elected officials to do something nationally for our people with disabilities.
In 1961, President John F. Kennedy created the President’s Panel on Mental Retardation. And in 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which provided funding for primary education and is seen by advocacy groups as expanding access to public education for children with disabilities. When one thinks about Kennedy’s and Johnson’s records on civil rights, it probably isn’t surprising that these two presidents also spearheaded this national movement for our people with disabilities.
This national movement led to section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act. This guarantees civil rights for people with disabilities in the context of federally funded institutions or any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance. All these years later, as an educator, I dealt with 504 cases daily. In 1975 Congress enacted Public Law 94-142, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA), which establishes a right to public education for all children regardless of disability. This was another good thing because, before federal legislation, parents had to mostly educate their children at home or pay for expensive private education.
The movement kept growing. In the 1982 case of the Board of Education of the Hendrick Hudson Central School District v. Rowley, the U.S. Supreme Court clarified the level of services for students with special needs. The Court ruled that special education services need only provide some “educational benefit” to students. Public schools were not required to maximize the educational progress of students with disabilities.
This ruling may not seem like a victory today, and this same question is once again circulating through our courts today in 2017. However, given the period it was made in, it was a victory because it said special education students could not pass through our school system without learning anything. They had to learn something. If one knows and understands how the laws work in this country, then one knows the rules always progress through tiny increments that add up to go over time. This ruling was a victory for special education students because it added one more rung onto the crusade.
In the 1980s, the Regular Education Initiative (REI) emerged. This was an attempt to return responsibility for the education of students with disabilities to neighborhood schools and regular classroom teachers. I am familiar with Regular Education Initiative because I spent four years as an REI teacher in the late 1990s and early 2000s. At this time, I was certified as both a special education teacher and a regular teacher. I was working in both capacities in a dual role as an REI teacher; that’s what was required of the position.
The 1990s saw a big boost for our special education students. 1990 birthed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This was, and is, the cornerstone of the concept of free and appropriate public education (FAPE) for all our students. To ensure FAPE, the law mandated that each student receiving special education services must also receive an Individualized Education Program (IEP).
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 reached beyond just the public schools. And Title 3 of IDEA prohibited disability-based discrimination in any place of public accommodation. Full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, or accommodations in public areas was expected. And, of course, public accommodations also included most places of education.
Also, in the 1990s, the full inclusion movement gained much momentum. This called for educating all students with disabilities in the regular classroom. I am also very familiar with this aspect of education, as I have been an inclusion teacher from time to time over my career as an educator on both sides of the aisle as a regular education teacher and a special education teacher. Now on to President Bush and his educational reform with his No Child Left Behind law that replaced President Johnson’s Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). The NCLB Act of 2001 stated that special education should continue to focus on producing results, and along with this came a sharp increase in accountability for educators.
Now, this NCLB Act was good and bad. Of course, we all want to see results for all of our students, and it’s common sense that accountability helps this sort of thing happen. Where this went crazy was that the NCLB demanded a host of new things but did not provide the funds or support to achieve these new objectives. Furthermore, teachers began feeling increasingly squeezed and threatened by the latest big business and corporate education moving in and taking over education. People with no educational background now found themselves influencing education policy and gaining access to many educational funds.
This accountability craze stemmed from excessive standardized testing, ran rapidly, and ran downstream from a host of well-connected elite Trump-like figures saying to their lower-echelon educational counterparts, “You’re fired!” This environment of trying to stay off the radar to keep one’s job, and beating our kids over the head with testing strategies, wasn’t good for our educators. It wasn’t good for our students. And it certainly wasn’t good for our more vulnerable special education students.
Some good did come from this era, though. For example, the updated Individuals with Disabilities with Education Act of 2004 (IDEA) happened. Under the IDEA, states that accept public funds for education must provide special education to qualifying children with disabilities. This further required schools to provide individualized or special education for children with qualifying disabilities. As I said earlier, the law is a long slow process of tiny steps adding to progress over time.
Finally, in 2015 President Obama’s Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) replaced President Bush’s NCLB, which had replaced President Johnson’s ESEA. Under Obama’s new ESSA, schools could now back off on some of the tests. Hopefully, the standardized testing craze has been put in check. However, only time will tell. ESSA also returned to more local control. You know, the kind of control our forefathers intended.
The U.S. Constitution grants no authority over education to the federal government. Education is not mentioned in the Constitution of the United States, and for a good reason. The Founders wanted most aspects of life managed by those closest to them, either by state or local government or by families, businesses, and other elements of civil society. They saw no role for the federal government in education.
You see, the Founders feared the concentration of power. They believed limiting and dividing power was defining and dividing power was determining and dividing power was limiting and dividing power was limiting and dividing power was limiting and dividing power was limiting and dividing power was limiting and dividing power was limiting and dividing power was limiting and dividing power was limiting and dividing power was the best way to protect individual freedom and civil society. However, this works both ways because the states often ask the feds for more educational money. And the feds will only give the states additional money if the states do what the feds want… Hmm… Checks and balances, as well as compromise, can be a tricky thing, huh?
So on goes the battle in education and all the back-and-forth pushing and pulling between the federal government, the states, and local government, as well as special education and regular education. And to add to this struggle, recently, Judge Moukawsher, a state judge from Connecticut, in a lawsuit filed against the state by the Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding, rocked the educational boat some more when in his ruling, he included a message to lawmakers to reassess what level of services students with significant disabilities are entitled to. His judgment and statements indicate that he thinks we’re spending too much money on our special education students. And for some of them isn’t worth it because their disabilities are too severe. You can imagine how controversial this was and how much it angered some people.
The 2016 United States Presidential election resulted in something few people saw coming. Real Estate mogul and reality star Donald Trump won the presidency and appointed anti-public educator Betsy Devos to head up this country’s Department of Education. Her charge, given to her by Trump, is to slash the Department of Education drastically and push private charter schools forward over what they call a failing public educational system.
My travels and our nation’s journey through the vast realm of education over all of these years have been interesting and tricky ones plagued with controversy. My travels and our nation’s journey through the vast realm of education over all of these years have been an interesting and tricky one invaded with fuss. My travels and our nation’s journey through the vast realm of education over all of these years have been interesting and problematic; ones plagued with controversy.
Myvels and our nation’s journey through the vast realm of education over all of these years have been interesting one trick plagued with controversy, Both my travels and our nation’s journey through the vast realm of education over all of these years have been an interesting one, and a tricky one plagued with controversy. My travels and our nation’s journey through the vast realm of education over all of these years have been interesting and problematic ones beset with controversy. My travels and our nation’s journey through the vast realm of education over all of these years have been interesting and challenging ones plagued with controversy.
My travels and our nation’s journey through the vast realm of education over all of these years have been an interesting and tricky one invaded with fuss. My travels and our nation’s journey through the vast realm of education over all these years have been interesting and tricky ones plagued with controversy. My travels and our nation’s journey through the vast realm of education over all of these years have been interesting and problematic ones beset with controversy.
My travels and our nation’s journey through the vast realm of education over all of these years have been interesting and, ricky ononeslagued with discussion, How this will affect our students, especially our more vulnerable special education students, nobody knows for sure at this time. But I can also tell you that few people feel comfortable with it. Only time will tell where this will go and how it will affect our special education students. So, as I said earlier, perhaps the largest, most pervasive issue in special education is its relationship to general education.
I first becamMyMyMye a special education teacher in the mid-1990s. A frieAt the time, ad’s father, a school principal, asked me to get out of special education because it wouldn’t last. I’ve been in and out of special education for more than two decades now, and sometimes I don’t know if I’m a regular education teacher, a special education teacher, or both. And sometimes,I think our country’s education might feel the same internal struggle as mine. But regardless, all these years later, special education is still here.
