Want to balance every school budget in the country? Eliminate special education.

[TD_washingtonredskins]

I don't know about all kids, Hubbs. I only know about my kid. They said he may never talk and now he does. I know that at his school, all the kids in his class are in single family households. Autism spectrum disorders drive families apart.

My kid has made progress in leaps and bounds. He is getting better and better and with constant attention to his needs, he will grow to be a productive member of society.

Whats the alternative? You tell me, but you don't seem to know very much about this subject, except that special needs kids cost a lot of money.

poly, that's awesome, by the way.

I know what you mean. If we can devote more of the budget to help those who need this help, I don't see why we wouldn't. The argument that "well-adjusted" kids are being deprived doesn't hold up to me. You can't just let these special needs kids NOT get help. I don't believe there is an alternative.

[Hubbs]

I don't know about all kids, Hubbs. I only know about my kid. They said he may never talk and now he does. I know that at his school, all the kids in his class are in single family households. Autism spectrum disorders drive families apart.

My kid has made progress in leaps and bounds. He is getting better and better and with constant attention to his needs, he will grow to be a productive member of society.

Whats the alternative? You tell me, but you don't seem to know very much about this subject, except that special needs kids cost a lot of money.

Oh, I don't. I'll be the first to say so. I think I've only made something like four posts in this thread, and I'm pretty much trying to figure out what these numbers are, because I think this could be an interesting conversation, but it really gets off track when someone is using hypothetical numbers to respond to someone else's hypothetical numbers, which in turn were a counter to a third set of hypothetical numbers. It's madness. Madness, I tells ya.

[polywog999]

Yes. And to my earlier point, if we were talking about a 1% group of students comprised of the best and brightest- future nobel winners, entrepreneurs, inventors, etc.... you could maybe even justify it.

But even forgetting that, I wonder why nobody is talking about all of the well-adjusted kids that are being denied 17 cents on the dollar because they had the ill-fortune to not be diagnosed with a learning disability?

Why is the argument being framed the other way around?

....

You are very ignorantly assuming that special ed kids grow up to play with string and collect welfare.

Meet my good friend Donna Williams...

http://www.donnawilliams.net/about.0.html

Or This fellow...

http://www.thestonkingsteps.com/about_will.htm

Check out these many authors...

http://incorrectpleasures.blogspot.com/2009/06/referenced-list-of-famous-people-who.html

Thursday, June 04, 2009

Influential autistic authors: a referenced list of famous people who have been identified as autistic or possibly autistic who wrote books featured in Books That Changed the World: The 50 Most Influential Books in Human History by Andrew Taylor...

Sir Isaac Newton FRS, author of Principia Mathematica (1642–1726, English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher and alchemist, born very small, started his schooling at the bottom of the class, regarded as lazy and inattentive, but after Newton beat the stuffing out of a school bully who was larger he rose to become the school’s “top boy”, Newton thrived on solitude, during 1665-1666 Newton returned to his home town from Cambridge University which was closed due to plague and in this period Newton invented calculus and did other very important intellectual work, Newton wrote the seminal book of maths and physics Principia Mathematica, Newton was appointed to the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge in his 20s, he secretly had heretical religious beliefs and practiced alchemy, in later years was Master of the Royal Mint and President of the Royal Society, a very religious person but he explained his brilliant scientific insights as the result of solitary persistent thought rather than divine revelation, never married and left no offspring)

Herman Melville, author of Moby-Dick (1819–1891, wrote the novels Moby-Dick and Billy Budd, Moby-Dick is regarded by some as the first great American novel, an epic work at 220,000 words in 135 chapters, about an obsessive and eccentric whaler captain’s quest for revenge against a white whale)

Charles Darwin FRS, author of On the Origin of Species (1809-1882, English naturalist, proposed the theory of natural selection which is the foundation of modern biology, wrote On the Origin of Species, “the most important biological book ever written” (Taylor 2008 p. 123) and it was also a popular book partly due to the clear and unpretentious style in which it was written, Darwin also wrote The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Darwin came from a distinguished family and he married a cousin, Darwin was a devoted father, three of their sons became Fellows of the Royal Society)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of A Study in Scarlet (1859–1930, a British polymath most famous for writing the Sherlock Holmes stories and novels, his story A Study in Scarlet has never been out of print since it was first published in 1888, Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories got the world hooked on the literary genre of detective fiction, Conan Doyle became an agnostic in his youth despite a religious education, qualified and practiced as a doctor, when he “killed” the Holmes character in a story there was an outcry from the public, Conan Doyle relented and continued to write Sherlock Holmes stories, ran for parliament but not elected, Conan Doyle investigated two real-life closed crime cases leading to the release of two prisoners, became involved with spiritualism late in life following the deaths of family members, Conan Doyle is credited with promoting the use of forensic science in police work with his stories, before it was widely used (Calamai 2008))

Albert Einstein FRS, author of Relativity: the Special and the General Theory (1879–1955, American theoretical physicist with German-Jewish origins, winner of Nobel Prize in physics in 1921, his many very important contributions to science include the general and special theories of relativity, Einstein wrote Relativity: the Special and the General Theory, Einstein expressed many political opinions but never joined any political party or movement, was thought to have had a large head in infancy, had very delayed speech development as a child, a narrowly-focused autodidact by nature he ignored school subjects that did not interest him and was not liked by some teachers, his first wife Mileva, a Serbian mathematician, also had a brilliant mind and some believe she made an unacknowledged contribution to Einstein’s work, they had 3 children, one illegitimate daughter who’s fate is unknown, a son who became an engineering professor and another son, Eduard, who was institutionalized as a schizophrenic, according to a member of the Einstein family many of Albert’s colleagues and friends believed Eduard was the one who had inherited his father’s intellect (Zackheim 2008), Einstein’s preserved normal-sized brain has been extensively studied by scientists)

Now I have to go, my son needs a ball of yarn.

[NavyDave]

If 20% of kids need "special" education, we need to start calling it something else. Exactly how broad is the definition we're using here? Does anyone "diagnosed" with ADD count?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1ytqd4gqh8

An effect option for dealing with ADD kids instead of using heavy doses of drugs like Ritalin?

[polywog999]

Oh, I don't. I'll be the first to say so. I think I've only made something like four posts in this thread, and I'm pretty much trying to figure out what these numbers are, because I think this could be an interesting conversation, but it really gets off track when someone is using hypothetical numbers to respond to someone else's hypothetical numbers, which in turn were a counter to a third set of hypothetical numbers. It's madness. Madness, I tells ya.

LOL! I was a little hard on ya Hubbs. This is a very important subject to me and I am a little over emotional about it sometimes.

[polywog999]

poly, that's awesome, by the way.

I know what you mean. If we can devote more of the budget to help those who need this help, I don't see why we wouldn't. The argument that "well-adjusted" kids are being deprived doesn't hold up to me. You can't just let these special needs kids NOT get help. I don't believe there is an alternative.

Thanks, friend. A lot of those kids turn out to lead very normal lives. It is an area where the money is well spent and has a good return.

[81artmonk]

Not quite sure if you are saying that kids with disabilities should fall by the way side because they are too expensive to educate.

I guess my daughter with down syndrome should sit at home because it's too expensive in a budget crisis to send her to school.

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

Rommel, you magnificent ****! I read your book!!

[TheDoyler23]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/education/20donovan.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&ref=nyregion&adxnnlx=1277146858-5tMkuXC+xJR7Ttp%2FVgqJ%2FA

Here's an interesting article from the NY Times about educating individuals with disabilities.

_____________

I KNOW individuals with disabilities can be more than fry cooks at McDonald's. I'm in the Voc Rehab/DD field and have worked with individuals that have far and away exceeded the expectations of the community around them.

And what if the pinnacle of an individual's vocational ability is to work at McDonald's? If they do that, work hard and be a productive member of the society, then that person is 100X better than the loser who sits on the couch and mocks him.

[polywog999]

Not quite sure if you are saying that kids with disabilities should fall by the way side because they are too expensive to educate.

I guess my daughter with down syndrome should sit at home because it's too expensive in a budget crisis to send her to school.

Chin up ole 81... some of these guys are coming around to our side of the street!

It takes time to change the world.

[MassSkinsFan]

poly, that's awesome, by the way.

I know what you mean. If we can devote more of the budget to help those who need this help, I don't see why we wouldn't. The argument that "well-adjusted" kids are being deprived doesn't hold up to me. You can't just let these special needs kids NOT get help. I don't believe there is an alternative.

I'd agree with that - there is no alternative.

What makes this thread so interesting is that this system is probably not sustainable as it is - there is a noticeable trend toward higher allocation for and higher percentage participation in special education. If it continues this way, other areas will need to be cut. At some point, without course correction, only things considered absolutely essential will be left - then what can be cut? Nothing!

I'm ignorant in this area - can someone explain what sort of analysis is being done on inclusion criteria for potential special education students, and also if there are people looking at ways to maximize quality of the education as well as efficiency with which it's delivered?

I ask about criteria because I saw the list of authors in polywog's post and thought to myself that those people succeeded without special education (though perhaps in their day, education was more special since it was more of a privilege and less of a right). Could it be that special needs do not always require special education?

I'm just trying to understand this better - sorry if the post offended anyone.

[NavyDave]

Yes. I'm in favor of burning the poor and throwing the weak off a cliff.

Now can we get back to the big-boy discussions about allocation?

00:04:06 Yahoo!

00:04:07 The system fails again!

00:04:09 JUDGE: And Mr. Fry...

00:04:09 I sentence you to the Home for Criminally Insane Humans.

00:04:13 Your Honor, that facility has been full ever since you ruled that being poor is a mental illness.

00:04:19 Order! Order!

00:04:20 The only poor people I want to hear about are the people who tend to my pores at the spa.

WE need a bigger Facility.

[techboy]

As far as I know, special education does not affect scores. And most of the kids that I know in special education are A+ students.

You're getting carried away now. Being in special education may not lower test scores, but I can tell you for a fact that as a group, special education students have lower test scores than the mainstream (as do other at-risk groups such as ESOL).

It's common sense, but I can tell you as a practical matter that in a month or two you're going to start reading stories in the local newspapers in Virginia (or maybe you won't, given your location) about how many schools are suddenly not making "AYP" (adequate yearly progress). The reason is that until this year, schools were allowed to use what's called "Safe Harbor" to meet standards. Technically, every group in a school has to meet test scores (it differs from subject to subject, but it's like an 80 to 90% pass rate for each test), but until this year, schools were allowed to pass anyway if certain at-risk groups didn't make it, as long as those groups were improving and the overall average was still good.

The feds just told Virginia that this won't fly, and the numbers aren't there.

I can also tell you as a special education teacher that the vast majority of special ed kids aren't A+ students. They have a range, just like everybody else, but their grades tend to be lower because they struggle in school, and many times have a defeated attitude and lowered expectations for themselves.

If only 1% of all children are in special education, but those programs are, in fact, taking up 18% of total education funding in the United States, then the numbers are absolutely screaming that something is very wrong with how we're going about this.

Not necessarily. Resources are allocated to those that need them. Does it bother you that 90% of unemployment benefits go to 10% of the population?

Fair does not mean equal.

[Burgold]

Fair does not mean equal.

I think this is a crucial point... in a lot of arenas.

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

Not necessarily. Resources are allocated to those that need them. Does it bother you that 90% of unemployment benefits go to 10% of the population?

Fair does not mean equal.

That's not at all the same thing. Education budgets are for all students. If x percentage is getting 2x or 3x the funding, that means that other parts are lacking.

And for the record, I fully admit that I wrote the inital posts on this thread in the most provacative over-the-top manner possible. It was intentional. I've also stated repeatedly that I have no desire to cut special education budgets (or any education budgets) in any way. If anything, all education budgets should be borderline untouchable.

Until - well...me - every member of my immediate family who attended college, became a teacher. My dad was a principal for over 35 years. My mom has an English teacher. My dad's brother was a prinicipal. His sister is now a principal. My mom's mom was a teacher. So...go, teachers.

Also, in talking with my father, the most fascinating trend in education over the past 20 years has been the utter explosion in special ed programs, diagnoses, etc. I would think that in his last ten years, he spent about 50 percent of his time in this area. He even won a Fullbright to Japan to study how they dealt with special ed. (Apparently - at least in the 90s - they didn't).

The point of this thread - and it eventually reached that - was to discuss how this growing area was going to impact education going forward. It's not like we are going to stop diagnosing kids with autism. And it's not like a new source of money is going to open up for Boards of Education. At some point, something is going to give here.

(By the way, I find it fascinating that some very strong small government advocates here seem to have no problem with an unlimited public budget for the areas that most closely impact their lives).

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't NCLB fail to differentiate between students with learning disabilities and those without? I seem to recall my father's frustration that LD students were expected to perform at grade level.

[MassSkinsFan]

Until - well...me - every member of my immediate family who attended college' date=' became a teacher. My dad was a principal for over 35 years. My mom has an English teacher. My dad's brother was a prinicipal. His sister is now a principal. My mom's mom was a teacher. So...go, teachers.[/quote']

I have a similar pedigree - I especially found this interesting because my Dad spent the last 11 years of his career as a superintendent, and I know these sorts of policy issues always interested him.

[NewCliche21]

You're getting carried away now. Being in special education may not lower test scores, but I can tell you for a fact that as a group, special education students have lower test scores than the mainstream (as do other at-risk groups such as ESOL).

It's common sense, but I can tell you as a practical matter that in a month or two you're going to start reading stories in the local newspapers in Virginia (or maybe you won't, given your location) about how many schools are suddenly not making "AYP" (adequate yearly progress). The reason is that until this year, schools were allowed to use what's called "Safe Harbor" to meet standards. Technically, every group in a school has to meet test scores (it differs from subject to subject, but it's like an 80 to 90% pass rate for each test), but until this year, schools were allowed to pass anyway if certain at-risk groups didn't make it, as long as those groups were improving and the overall average was still good.

The feds just told Virginia that this won't fly, and the numbers aren't there.

I can also tell you as a special education teacher that the vast majority of special ed kids aren't A+ students. They have a range, just like everybody else, but their grades tend to be lower because they struggle in school, and many times have a defeated attitude and lowered expectations for themselves.

Not necessarily. Resources are allocated to those that need them. Does it bother you that 90% of unemployment benefits go to 10% of the population?

Fair does not mean equal.

I said that most that I have seen; I didn't say all of them or the vast majority. Unlike some in this thread, I don't let a very limited sample size allow me to claim expertise.

And your last line is absolutely correct.

If people want to divide things up perfectly equally, then I suggest a non-Republic form of government, because that's not what we have in America.

We treat people fairly, and for someone to claim that not having a disability is unfortunate and allows those with disabilities to basically rob them of their funding, it shows a lack of education (irony) on that person's part about what special education is for.

Someone else brought up a great analogy earlier: Let's shut down the burn units so that the maternity ward, which affects everyone, will get more funding. Makes sense using the logic seen in this thread.

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

Someone else brought up a great analogy earlier: Let's shut down the burn units so that the maternity ward, which affects everyone, will get more funding. Makes sense using the logic seen in this thread.

Well, hospitals do try to open up more beds in high profit areas. Though - in theory - all units in a hospital should be profitable.

You don't seem very good at analogies. The better argument would be eliminating the charity offices in hospitals.

I'm here to help.

[techboy]

That's not at all the same thing. Education budgets are for all students. If x percentage is getting 2x or 3x the funding' date=' that means that other parts are lacking.[/quote']

That's simply not true. As a teacher, I can tell you that the students that we all love the most, and point to as our greatest successes, are the ones that we could lock in a closet with a textbook, and let out a year later to take the test.

Other students are more needy and require more resources, and not just students with a special education label.

And for the record' date=' I fully admit that I wrote the inital posts on this thread in the most provacative over-the-top manner possible. [/quote']

Your schtick is blatantly obvious. I'm not sure if you'll see this as good or bad.

(By the way' date=' I find it fascinating that some very strong small government advocates here seem to have no problem with an unlimited public budget for the areas that most closely impact their lives).[/quote']

In actuality, the plan for education* I support would likely put me out of a job. It's not real hard for me, though, because I know it will never happen, which I guess makes me idealistic.

* In my opinion, we waste boatloads of resources educating kids in useless things, while not giving them the training they actually need. Certain students are college material, and certain students are not (despite what their parents think), so instead of forcing students that can't pass Algebra I to take Physics because that's what they need for the diploma, they should be tracked like they do in Europe and placed in vocational schools where they can learn a trade (and still continue to receive basic liberal arts schooling). Students would come out of high school with a marketable skill, and we could drop the charade that everyone needs to go to college, thus reducing costs for state schools in that area too.

This would, of course, put me out of a job (at least the one I like), because I teach special education Active Physics, which is a Physics course designed for students that failed Algebra I. In my world, such a class would not exist, and I'd likely be teaching a lesser subject like English or something.

[NewCliche21]

Well' date=' hospitals do try to open up more beds in high profit areas. Though - in theory - all units in a hospital should be profitable.

You don't seem very good at analogies. The better argument would be eliminating the charity offices in hospitals.

I'm here to help.[/quote']

LKB: Just because you don't get it doesn't mean that it's wrong.

Special education is not a "charity" in any sense, and it's pretty despicable of you to try to indicate it as such.

Children deserve to be educated. You can keep saying that it's not a fundamental right, but you're in the wrong country if you think that way.

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

This would, of course, put me out of a job (at least the one I like), because I teach special education Active Physics, which is a Physics course designed for students that failed Algebra I. In my world, such a class would not exist, and I'd likely be teaching a lesser subject like English or something.

I actually am moving closer and closer to this view. This used to be the way American education worked. In my mom's yearbook, she is listed as on the "Academic" track while her twin brother is listed as on the "Vocational" track.

At some point, we decided that every American student needs to go to a four year college. And that doesn't make any sense.

I don't think that you can necessarily leave high school now and get a job with just a vocational background. But there should be one, two, and four year programs at vocational schools where you build on this.

[zoony]

I actually am moving closer and closer to this view. This used to be the way American education worked. In my mom's yearbook' date=' she is listed as on the "Academic" track while her twin brother is listed as on the "Vocational" track.

At some point, we decided that every American student needs to go to a four year college. And that doesn't make any sense.

I don't think that you can necessarily leave high school now and get a job with just a vocational background. But there should be one, two, and four year programs at vocational schools where you build on this.[/quote']

Getting off topic, but I absolutely agree with this. In addition to the obvious, consider also the upward pressure it has meant for college tuition.

Granted, lots of folks are out of work right now because of the housing collapse, but I know several people in trade industry (electricians, framers, plumbers) who were making $70k + a year. And that's in BFE TN.

I'm told heavy equipment operators in NY and other metro areas make $100 / hour.

Why are we sending them to college again?

[Major Harris]

I actually am moving closer and closer to this view. This used to be the way American education worked. In my mom's yearbook' date=' she is listed as on the "Academic" track while her twin brother is listed as on the "Vocational" track.

At some point, we decided that every American student needs to go to a four year college. And that doesn't make any sense.

I don't think that you can necessarily leave high school now and get a job with just a vocational background. But there should be one, two, and four year programs at vocational schools where you build on this.[/quote']

i've been that way for years.

we've shoved way too many square pegs into the round hole of college for too long.

[Major Harris]

Correct me if I am wrong' date=' but doesn't NCLB fail to differentiate between students with learning disabilities and those without? I seem to recall my father's frustration that LD students were expected to perform at grade level.[/quote']

it's true. and nclb is about dead. no one saw that one coming.