We welcome your comments on the cover story of the Spring 2009 issue of CommonWealth magazine.

Commenters below include James Major, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of 766 Approved Private Schools, Ellen M. Chambers, executive director of SPEDWatch Inc., and Peter Ajemian, the father of a special education student in Massachusetts.

Wasting time on a ‘blame game’

By James Major

It is fair to say that CommonWealth magazine, published by MassINC, is known as a leader in public policy issues reporting and often reporting that suggests helpful public policy solutions. That is why the Massachusetts Association of 766 Approved Private Schools is alarmed at the current article on special education, which is a rehash of old, tired and unfounded arguments and misleading information instead of the more thoughtful reporting and offering of real solutions.

Much of the article focuses on private special education schools and yet our association, as the state organization representing private special education and a group closely involved in the special needs schools issue for over 20 years, was not included in the reporting despite the fact that the story is the result of a “three-month investigation.” Had the association been consulted, the article would have been informed with the key notion that valid comparisons of private special education school expenditures to other states — which the article relies on for key findings — are simply not possible. Why? Because most other states rely on state-operated schools for the disabled instead of private schools.

In addition, had the association been consulted, the facts might have been reported accurately about the increase in private school tuition costs, which rose 79 percent from FY98 to FY08, instead of the 126 percent boldly noted in an accompanying graph. By comparison, in-district (public) special education costs rose 71 percent for the same time period.

Just three decades ago, when public schools were refusing to even allow children with disabilities to attend school, Massachusetts’s private special education schools were providing life-changing education and treatment to students such as Helen Keller, who attended the private Perkins School for the Blind in the late 1880s. It is because of this unique history that Massachusetts has private special education schools while most other states have few, if any, private schools for disabled students. They rely instead on large state-operated schools for the deaf, blind or developmentally disabled. Of course, then, the article would state that these other states have low private special education school expenditures — they have no such schools in which to enroll their students. In fact, 1,500 students from many of these other states are sent to Massachusetts every year, resulting in over $160 million annually in tuition payments from other states which is used to subsidize the cost of educating Massachusetts students.

CommonWealth tries to portray parents as opportunistic abusers of the special education appeal process without providing any facts about the appeal system. For example, the article doesn’t mention that 95 percent of the over 160,000 education plans written every year are approved by parents. After reading the spring issue of the magazine, you wouldn’t necessarily know that less than 1 percent of special education plans are the subject of an appeal hearing each year. The article doesn’t mention that parents win only 20 percent of the appeal decisions.

Out of over 160,000 students in special education in the 2008 school year, exactly seven students won placements they requested in an appeal decision. But the reader is not informed of this fact. Instead, the article relies on carefully selected anecdotal stories.

Long on blame and recriminations, the article is too short on solutions, which is uncharacteristic of CommonWealth. Out of 12 pages, three sentences are devoted to any attempt to understand why special education costs are rising, especially in private special education schools. The reader isn’t informed that the number of severely to moderately disabled children aged 0 to 3 enrolled in early intervention services has increased by 348 percent in the past 15 years, from 9,809 in 1992 to 29,546 in 2007.

The massive increase in the number of children with severe disabilities is the result of two trends which compound each other. On one hand, there has been a 25 percent increase in infants born at low birth weight and a 36 percent increase in premature births. On the other hand, there has been a 20 percent decrease in infant mortality due to advances in neonatal medicine. In short, there are more premature infants being born and they are surviving at higher rates. These infants are more likely to be disabled and require the intensive services provided by private special education schools. However, CommonWealth offers no suggestions for premature birth prevention programs or new ways to fund special education to help school districts pay for services which will become more and more costly due to increased disabilities.

Special education has an enormous, positive impact on families and our state. By providing children with disabilities critically needed education and treatment, we give them opportunity for hope and achievement, and to become productive members of society and our economy. Here’s one of the thousands of reasons why we feel it is very important to put private school special education funding in proper perspective: If not for the Cotting School, Guy, a shy 13-year old diagnosed with Spina Bifida at birth who arrived at the Cotting without the ability to take his own coat off, is now able to play numerous sports, has dramatically improved his academics, and is living a far more independent (and happy) life.

It is regrettable that CommonWealth squandered an opportunity to identify real problems and offer real solutions. We have wasted enough time on the blame game and it is time to start working on ways to prevent the heartache of disabilities and provide adequate funding for special education.

James Major is executive director of the Massachusetts Association of 766 Approved Private Schools.

Special-ed students are still shortchanged

By Ellen M. Chambers

I was distressed but not surprised by your cover story about the cost of special education in Massachusetts. Distressed because the story reinforces damaging misinformation about students with special needs and their parents. Not surprised because public discourse on special education never seems to progress past the point of cost. Left untold is the other side of the story: the human side. The nonprofit organization SPEDWatch, of which I am executive director, is telling the other side of the story and revealing the truth about a special education system so rife with dysfunction that it defies all reason.

In 1974 Massachusetts became the first state in the nation to pass a law guaranteeing children with special needs the right to a public school education. Congress followed suit a year later, enacting a special education law that promised all children with disabilities a publicly funded education designed to meet their unique needs. That promise has never been kept.

Fast forward 25 years. In 2000, the National Council on Disability (NCD) conducted an investigation looking at over two decades of federal monitoring and enforcement of special education law. Their findings, published in their report Back To School On Civil Rights (January 2000), are chilling and include the following:

Federal efforts to enforce the law over several Administrations have been inconsistent, ineffective and lacking any real teeth. Too many parents continue to expend endless resources in confronting obstacles to their child’s most basic right to an appropriate education, often at the expense of their personal lives, their financial livelihoods and their careers. Lack of accountability, poor enforcement, and systemic barriers have robbed too many students of their educational rights and opportunities … and have produced a separate system of education for students with disabilities rather than one unified system that ensures full and equal … access for all students.

Today, 34 years after passage of our federal special education law, nothing has changed. Between July 2004 and June 2007 the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) documented 3,247 violations of federal and state special education law by our public schools — nearly 100 violations a month! And these were not trivial paperwork violations. They were substantive violations that had a significant negative impact on students.

Horrified, SPEDWatch asked DESE to commit to a plan to reduce the frequency with which schools violate student’s special education rights. Both State Director of Special Education Marcia Mittnacht and then-Acting Education Commissioner Jeffrey Nellhaus refused. SPEDWatch then spoke directly with current Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester, DESE Board member Dana Mohler-Faria, Secretary of Education S. Paul Reville, and Gov. Patrick about these deplorable conditions. They, too, refused to act. In an April 3, 2009, phone conversation with Ken Kienas of the US Office of Special Education Programs, I learned that our government does not require states to maintain compliance with the special education regulations it itself enacted.

The fallout, the wasted human potential, is staggering. Capable Massachusetts students with special needs are failing in huge numbers. Only 26 percent are proficient in reading and writing (compared to 73 percent of their non-disabled peers). Only 19 percent are proficient in mathematics (compared to 63 percent of their non-disabled peers). The academic achievement gap between students with and without disabilities is worse today, at every grade level and in every subject, than it was 10 years ago. Not so easily measured is the emotional damage inflicted on children who are forced to live with continued school failure.

My own daughter nearly fell victim to our special education system, which too often does nothing more than drag down and write off students who learn differently. Sarah was diagnosed with high-functioning autism at the age of eight. She has a normal, average IQ, but the neurological implications of her autism require that her academic instruction be individualized and delivered at a slowed pace. During grades 2, 3 and 4 a neuropsychologist with clinical expertise in her condition consulted with her school on a monthly basis, showing staff how Sarah needed to be taught. The school, however, refused to follow the expert’s recommendations. They insisted she was learning, doing fine, and they passed her on from grade to grade.

Testing at the end of grade 4 revealed that Sarah had learned nothing in the previous three years. She was functioning at a first grade level in all academics, and the stress of struggling in school had pushed her to the edge of a psychiatric hospitalization. A psychiatrist diagnosed her with post traumatic stress disorder (school anxiety induced). Even then, despite stark evidence to the contrary, her school insisted that they were meeting her needs adequately. Eventually, only 9 years old, Sarah became suicidal. Sending her to school made her worse. Keeping her home was illegal. The school’s recommendation? Put Sarah in a class with cognitively impaired students where academic expectations would be reduced and where she would be taught a simple trade such as food preparation or housekeeping work. Naturally I refused and, long story short, Sarah was placed at a private special education school. There, in 18 months, her three-year learning gap was closed and her shattered psyche was rebuilt. She is now 17, excelling in all academic subjects, and looking forward to college. Sarah is one of the lucky ones: She beat the system that failed her. Thousands of other Massachusetts students are not so lucky.

Unless parents can afford to hire an attorney or an advocate, they will be easily outmaneuvered by school administrators who are focused on cost control. At the end of the day, administrators go home knowing they’ve saved their district money. Parents go home knowing their child is doomed to failure. The SPEDWatch report Broken Promises: Special Education in Massachusetts provides a comprehensive study of the hell that these parents and students endure every day. Our special education system is irretrievably broken. It has not, and can not, deliver the education to which children with special needs have a legal and moral right.

In the interest of journalistic balance, SPEDWatch challenges MassINC to investigate the other side of the special education story.

Ellen M. Chambers is the executive director of SPEDWatch Inc.

Special ed generalizations are misleading

By Peter Ajemian

As the father of a 13-year-old girl with autism who attends public school in Massachusetts, I welcome the serious attention your cover story gave to special education. I feel compelled, however, to urge you and your readers to reconsider how we define whether special education is “paying off.”

Your article stated “there is little evidence the state’s nearly $2 billion investment in special education is “paying off, as hoped. According to federal data from 2000, Massachusetts ranked fifth nationally in graduating special education students and had one of the lowest dropout rates in the country. The most recent federal data, in part reflecting the advent of MCAS as a graduation requirement in 2003, show Massachusetts ranking 32nd in graduating special education students, and its dropout rate for those students is the sixth worst in the nation…”

I cannot believe the authors of this article meant to communicate these facts in this juxtaposition. You cannot and should not equate the overall “success” of a state’s investment in special education by looking at MCAS scores or graduation data.

The grades and scores of special education students don’t just rise and fall according to the effort devoted, the practices used or the money spent. Many special education students have severe enough disabilities that their cognitive functioning is impaired. I’m not going to list disabilities and the characteristics accompanying them, but, my point is you simply should NOT refer to this sub-population as another section on a chart whose scores are – according to your contextual description – puzzlingly substandard.

By emphasizing MCAS and related measures, you’re showing a large disregard for what, in my view, is the most important goal of special education, and, that is: To help each student maximize their potential and be in the best position to function as independently as possible upon exiting school.

Parents, teachers, paraprofessionals, speech and language specialists, and occupational therapists can tell you how much it means to see a student with a serious disability make a noticeable stride forward after months of work.

Special education is, by definition, very complex. Most people do not understand it and it’s difficult to explain it in one article. However, perhaps your article could have alluded more the many different challenges that different boys and girls with disabilities face instead of so often “lumping” them together for the purpose of citing scores and data. Individuals on the autism spectrum alone have an tremendous variety of characteristics, symptoms, behaviors and strengths and weaknesses. If you generalize too much, particularly without qualifiers, you can mislead. Rather, to attempt to understand special education involves FAR more than dwelling on budgets and test scores. It involves neuroscience and research and never-ending advances and innovations in approaches to teaching.

I have a final, positive point. I believe that the investment made in Massachusetts’ special education students will “pay off” in ways larger and more unimaginable than one can see. Many young people will become adults who have an enhanced capacity to understand the world around them – and, to make more decisions and moves on their own partly as a result of the tremendous “investment” of special education.

Before Massachusetts contemplates reducing special education resources, I hope state legislators, the Governor, and all parties involved will think hard about what our investment means to these students’ lives in the future. Investing now may be much better than addressing people’s needs more later.

Peter Ajemian the father of a 13-year-old student with autism in a Massachusetts school district.