L.A. on Verge of Overhauling Special Education

In a landmark settlement compared to desegregation for 65,000 disabled students, the Los Angeles Board of Education on Monday is expected to revamp its “seriously deficient” special education programs and admit violations of state and federal law.

One in every 10 pupils in the district is enrolled in special education programs, which a court-supervised study found fail to identify and test children with learning problems and rely too heavily on separate and often unequal instruction.

By signing the settlement decree, the board will agree to move thousands of physically, mentally and emotionally disabled students onto regular school campuses--into mainstream classes wherever possible--and to cut back on transfers of poorly behaved students to expensive private schools. It also will create a massive computer program to track the educational progress of all 640,000 Los Angeles Unified School District students.

“This is civil rights litigation . . . not a luxury,” said Bonifacio Garcia, the district’s attorney in the case. “These are services we felt we had an obligation to provide.”

Los Angeles Unified is being praised for its willingness to admit fault and make efforts to change by the very attorneys who were poised to fight the district in court had an agreement not been reached.

But they note that it took a class action lawsuit filed two years ago on behalf of a learning disabled South-Central Los Angeles student to reveal the problems with special education even though concerns had been surfacing for years through individual complaints and lawsuits.

Robert M. Myers, whose Sherman Oaks firm brought the original lawsuit along with the American Civil Liberties Union, said his office handles hundreds of cases annually against the district.

“There’s just no end to the horror stories,” he said. “We have in our file noncompliance citations from the federal government. We assumed that the Board of Education was aware of them too.”

Yet the pervasiveness of the problems was never made clear to the board, said board President Mark Slavkin. It now appears obvious that there were communication breakdowns aplenty, he said, and the board wants to find out why--but only after the problems are fixed.

“We have not spent a lot of time and analysis on who did what to whom. . . . We want to get this thing done and implemented,” he said. “But I don’t think the [blame] issue should fall by the wayside.”

Costs Unknown

What the changes will cost remains unknown, and critics believe that cost could be a reality check on the good intentions.

In recent years, much public attention has focused on the ballooning expense of special education, which far exceeds the funding sources earmarked for those programs and digs deeply into budgets for all students. It costs an annual average of $8,400 to educate a special education student, compared with $3,700 for others.

In Los Angeles Unified, nearly $550 million was spent on special education last year, about 13% of the total district budget.

The court-supervised study was conducted by consultants selected by the school district and the lawsuit plaintiffs. Some of the measures recommended could cost millions of dollars: hiring personal aides for mainstreamed disabled students or providing districtwide teacher training. But those new expenses could be offset by other proposed changes, such as phasing out all 18 separate special education campuses.

Cost is an issue that will dominate public hearings planned for January to help the board decide how to implement the reforms, as well as Monday’s closed-door board vote on the agreement, Slavkin said.

Some board members have already compared approving the settlement to signing a blank check, but a majority appears poised to approve it anyway because “the law doesn’t have an asterisk to say, ‘Services will be provided up to affordable levels,’ ” Slavkin said.

Another issue for the board will be complaints by parents and advocacy groups that they were excluded from the process leading to the settlement. Many parents of disabled children have fought hard to navigate the large urban system and they feel that personal experience counts for more than any study.

During the 10-month study, the consultants interviewed individual parents, but there was no general call for comment from them or their representatives. Even the district’s own Special Education Commission was kept in the dark about the study’s details.

“I’m the head of their special ed commission, so why have I been left out of this thing?” asked Ben Adams, whose disabled 10-year-old son is assigned a personal aide so he can attend a regular school in Westwood.

Dissatisfaction Voiced

Although parents of special education students generally support the settlement’s provisions for integrating children with their non-disabled peers, they say extensive work must be done before such inclusion can work well in Los Angeles Unified.

For Michael Seale, chronic dissatisfaction with inclusion of his 12-year-old quadriplegic son, Michael Jr., ended with the boy being educated at home by a district-funded tutor. In one extreme example, Seale said, his son was promised a computer--which he needs if he is to communicate in writing--but had to wait more than six years to get it.

“The illusion of inclusion, that’s what’s happening in L.A. Unified,” he said. “They need innovative programs to make it work. . . . There’s no sense having students in a program where they can’t learn.”

Although signing the settlement begins the implementation phase, which will offer wide opportunities for public participation through hearings and focus groups, some parents believe that too much has already been set in stone.

“So much has been done wrong in this district in special ed that it’s hard to have a good strong feeling that they’re going to do it right now,” said Liz Spencer, a freelance special education advocate whose son, who has Down’s syndrome, is in a mainstream second-grade class.

“But,” she added, reflecting the sentiments of many parents interviewed, “I want to believe it. . . . I am so hopeful.”

What they all know is that the law is on their side, that it will be illegal for the district to drag its heels in reaching compliance, especially now that its shortcomings have been spelled out.

The 1973 Individuals With Disabilities Education Act required public schools to seek out disabled students and provide them with free education tailored to their needs. In the ensuing years, separate state institutions were phased out, a precursor to current laws favoring inclusion of students in mainstream classes.

The U.S. Department of Education investigated the district last year and found it out of compliance, particularly in delaying by months the reassessments of special ed students, which must take place every three years. The government backed away from threats to cut funding--to the district or the entire state--because of the ongoing settlement talks.

Mother’s Pleas

The original litigation, filed in 1993 on behalf of Manual Arts High School student Chanda Smith, focused particularly on the district’s poor record-keeping. In Smith’s case, test results showing that she fell far below grade level were lost and, the suit maintains, no one heeded her mother’s pleas for a special program even as Chanda failed 10th grade twice.

As the suit progressed, however, it was broadened to include the concerns of other parents.

Faced with a near-certain loss in court--and the parable of New York City schools, which lost a similar suit in 1979--Los Angeles Unified agreed to cooperate. Instead of proceeding to court, each side chose a consultant to form an investigating team, which drafted the 191-page report on which the settlement is based.

The consultants were Louis Barber, a past chief of special education for the state, and Mary Margaret Kerr, a Pennsylvania child psychiatrist who has written extensively about behavior disorders. Both have worked with other urban districts and reported that Los Angeles Unified’s problems, while severe, are common.

Overall, the consultants attributed the deficiencies to a disorganized system that lacked accountability, especially since 1992, when the assistant superintendent for special education retired and his position was eliminated. They recommended that a new assistant superintendent be hired and that special education services be consolidated under that division.

But they also found that in many ways the district remained old-fashioned in its attitudes toward disabled students, clinging to notions that “separate is better.” Only 170 disabled students are fully included in regular classrooms, but an additional 20,000 spend most of their day there.

At the other end of the inclusion spectrum, about 4,400 students are educated at special district schools, separated from regular students. The district’s special education coordinator, Steven Mark, said some parents prefer the segregated sites, especially for severely physically disabled children, “because they feel it’s a safer environment.”

About 3,500 of the most isolated students receive instruction at special private schools, at an annual average cost of $20,400 a student.

This last group has tripled in number in the past decade, which the consultants said pointed to a deeper problem. Many of the students assigned to the private schools have more behavioral problems than actual learning disabilities, the consultants concluded. These students could be handled in a regular classroom at a cost saving to the district.

For parents, one of the most crucial of the consultants’ recommendations may be one of the simplest: to simplify the voluminous paperwork that dominates their lives. A survey found that most of the documents could be deciphered only by readers with at least a college degree. Parents say it took them years to really understand their rights.

“You know, at first you don’t know anything and you want to trust these people,” parent Michael Seale said. “You look at these forms and they don’t mean anything. . . . I mean, who knows all this legalese?”