The Thicket of Special Ed

In the 10th grade for the second time at Manual Arts High School, Chanda Smith could barely decipher the words in a third-grade reader. She couldn’t do multiplication. She couldn’t even tell time. Sloppy record-keeping by the school district had denied her the special education she needed. Her mother sued. The Los Angeles Unified School District admitted blame and settled what became a landmark class-action lawsuit with a promise to overhaul its “seriously deficient” special education programs.

Since that 1996 federal consent decree, more children receive services and are mainstreamed into general classes. Their parents face less challenging paperwork. However, only 65% of special education teachers are fully qualified, some children are misclassified and advocates complain that many students must wait too long for appropriate instruction.

Now, the district wants modifications, saying it can do a better job for children with physical and learning disabilities if it is freed of the 31 committees and reams of prescriptive regulation imposed by the decree. That may be so, but the LAUSD must persuade justifiably suspicious parents that the changes would make the system better, not worse.

In the Los Angeles school district, special ed costs close to $1.1 billion per year, in a total budget of nearly $9 billion. In a just world, this expense would be paid largely by Washington, since the 1973 Individuals With Disabilities Education Act requires public schools to seek out disabled students and provide them with free education tailored to their needs. That expense keeps growing with the rise in identification of autistic and learning-disabled children. Eighty-three thousand students, more than one of 10 in the LAUSD, are enrolled in special education. Most are physically, mentally or emotionally disabled. Some, however, do not belong there. Many, often African American boys, are misclassified because they didn’t learn to read in the early grades or they have behavioral problems.

Administrators now claim that the school district is doing a better job of teaching reading in the primary grades, and test results confirm that assessment. They also insist they are determining more accurately who belongs in special ed.

Frustrated parents want children who really need help identified early. They want appropriate instruction from qualified teachers. They want that instruction changed if a better method is found, without waiting a school year or longer for a reassessment. They also want their children to be in regular classrooms if possible.

Chanda Smith finally got the special help she needed for a visual processing disorder. She learned to read competently, to multiply and to tell time. She graduated from high school after lending her name to a historic lawsuit that helped spare many future learning-disabled students from the frustrations she suffered. She is 25 and a mother now. If the LAUSD wants more freedom from the Chanda Smith decree, it must prove that if her children or any others honestly need special help they will get it.