© 1998 Robert J. Heller
Throughout America parents of children with Learning Disabilities
(LD) place their hopes in the schools to help their children.
Rarely, if ever, does the parent question the credentials of the
school and the teachers to do the job. For the truth is that over
the past 30 years, the record of achievement in remediation of LD
problems in the schools has been abysmally poor. To understand why
this is so, one needs to understand the system.
In the public schools the usual point of contact is the teacher.
Teachers are, as a lot, very well intentioned people who would like
nothing better in life than to be left alone to do their job. But,
there is a large and pervasive educational hierarchy over that
teacher which may include supervisors, curriculum development
specialists, principals, various administrators, and then the
centralized authority be it city, county or state which superimposes
an additional paper-shuffling hierarchy.
The Federal government decrees in the Individuals with
Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) that students tagged as LD are
entitled to an Individual Education Plan (IEP). Just complying with
the requirements of this law is burdening the schools and rather
than giving the teachers the latitude to do what will help - - it
often times hogties their desires because the IEP, once adopted is
not easily ignored or changed in term. Today we find school
administrations openly criticizing the IDEA on financial grounds;
that more than 30% of their assets are being devoted to less than
12% of their students. A growing tide of backlash will be noted over
the next few years, as school taxing authorities seek ways subvert
IDEA. This is a law that the Feds enacted but failed to fund.
Setting aside the financial problems related to IEPs, we need to
deal with the facts of life in any large scale bureaucracy. Several
rules operate in such a milieu. Without assigning any level of
importance to them they may be described as WIFM, JUST SAY NO, and
STAND FIRM. WIFM is the acronym formed from What's In it For Me?
Bureaucrats in any part of any government know that innovation is
not usually rewarded. On the WIFM theory, if one adopts a new method
or procedure and it doesn't work out, he takes the blame. If the new
method works, his boss gets the credit. So, on the basis of WIFM
there is nothing "in it" for these bureaucrats to develop
better programs.
One of the two most basic rules of any government position is
that YOU CAN NEVER BE WRONG BY SAYING NO. Consider how this works.
Congress enacted the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and every
governmental agency set up an FOIA office staffed by government
employees. Those of us who have ever tried to use the FOIA know that
the first usual response is a stall, then request for excessive
fees, followed by a statement that the data is not in a retrievable
form, and finally they cough up some of what you want and deny
access to the rest. You now can file a request for administrative
review, which makes work for some more governmental employees, and
finally if you have exhausted your review under FOIA you can go to
Court. I have never, repeat never, heard of a case where a
government lawyer looked at the complaint and said, "Yes, the
taxpayer is right. Give him what he has requested." The
government lawyers get paid to defend these cases so by filing them
we enhance the value of their positions and validate their work. We
play right into their hands as they build their little empires at
our expense. In schools it is no different. Whatever one does, one
can never be wrong by saying no. That includes saying NO to new
methods and programs to help the LD student without even
investigating the merits of the program.
Finally, there is the other great rule of governmental operation
which says WHEN IN DOUBT, DO NOTHING. This is closely associated to
WIFM; for regardless of whether or not the employee thinks the
action he is requested to take may produce a benefit for you, he
can't be called to task if he takes no action. He can only wind up
in the soup if he actually does something. Ergo, it's much safer to
stick to the approved practices of the past regardless that they
haven't worked.
Today the schools are rife with experts. The parents are not
presumed to know what is wrong with their child, or what will help
their child. In fact, under IDEA it is quite clear that while you
have a right to demand that your LD child receive attention, you
have no say in what form that may take. The school presumes that
their expertise based on a few hours a day with your child supplants
your observations based on a lifetime with him. They will often
refer your child to a "professional" on their staff whose
qualifications are none of your business. And the sad commentary is
that most parents are being gulled into thinking the school must be
doing the best thing possible for their child, when in fact there is
little evidence to support such a hope.
Meanwhile, the Special Education teachers are being asked to deal
with a plethora of cases which may include mental retardation,
dyslexia, language difficulties, other forms of LD, physical
development problems, and that catch-all currently in vogue called
ADD. Even with co-teaching it is impossible that effective
remediation of the problems of these various needs can be
accomplished within the time and budgets established by the
administrators who are not working with these children themselves.
The law says the school must accommodate these children. The
accommodation test is met by putting them in the Spec Ed classes.
The law doesn't say that the accommodation has to work or be worth
the effort.
With shrinking budgets and increasing demands for accountability,
it is little wonder that every year a smaller percentage of the
education budget is being spent on actual teaching of the children.
Teacher's zeal for their work is being blunted by the paperwork
loads put upon them. This mountain of paperwork creates more jobs
for administrative staff who generally contribute nothing to the
education of the children. But like any other bureaucrats they
become entrenched in their positions and the paperwork validates
their existence. They are not going to give up easily. It's no
wonder that teachers are burning out in this kind of environment.
The last rule which works in this scenario is the CYA rule. It is
roughly translated from Cover Your Backside. Before a school
principal, administrator or teacher will adopt a program it must be
approved by a higher authority. The higher authority, whoever he or
she may be, will only make a decision based on somebody else's
findings that whatever the program is, it is good and works. They
rarely stick out their necks to use their own brains in making these
decisions. By using the CYA approach, if they make a decision and it
is later criticized their reply is that it was based upon the
reports of reliable third parties. If these people lack the capacity
for logical thought and positive action, one may wonder why they are
employed at the public expense.
Who are these "reliable third parties?" When we talk
about education they invariably are university connected research
types who are working on somebody else's grant money. They study
learning problems like scientists in films study rats in a box. They
study, analyze, make charts and graphs and report in "learned
journals" read by a handful of their peers. But those who live
by the grant know that the two certain ways to lose that funding are
(1) to admit that what they have found out is worthless, or (2) find
a solution to the problem. Can it be a surprise then that these
researchers toil away year after year with very little real success
to show as the product of their work. In fact, in the field of LD,
one finds perhaps the most fractious field of endeavor. If you read
the literature, and most of it is stupefying, you may come to the
conclusion that each of these experts spends half his life promoting
his own theories as if he were anointed at the right hand of God,
and the rest of his time is devoted to trying to discredit the work
of those who do not agree with his pronouncements. And while the
peers review and compete, the peasants (LD students) continue to
suffer.
To better understand why the schools can't help, we also need to
understand that the school system is trying to serve two masters. In
one hand they want to provide an equal education to each child;
while in the other hand they seek to provide to each child according
to that child's needs. These are incompatible objectives. Further,
the American education system is patterned on Henry Ford's
production line. If all children were the same, we could move them
along an educational conveyor belt and feed them the same data at
the same rate in the same manner. But, children are not automobiles
nor are they like cookies moving along the Keebler production line.
They are unique individuals. This is important because the due-God
of the education system is the funded research programs which
supposedly produce answers. These answers are usually quantified and
reported as statistics. But one of the underlying bases of the study
of statistics is that numbers are constants and that the subjects of
the statistics (here being humans) are equal units. When we talk
about quantifying research in the social science fields, we enter
the never-never land where science meets speculation. I could
correlate the sales of televisions in Brazil with sun spot activity;
but it proves absolutely nothing other than my ability to apply
statistical methods to irrelevant data. But by such methods we can
seem to compare apples to oranges and come up with tables that show
how quickly the skin of the apples will turn from green to orange.
Here is the snag. In order to CYA, the schools rely on these data
published in the so-called "learned journals" and then
seek to apply that methodology to their students. It is of little
concern that the methods do not show results in the short-run
because they are in the long-run business. You child's problem is
that he is now a statistic and the fact that he slides down the
chute of educational foolishness is not their concern. They hope
that over the long-run that the programs will show a positive
result. That would be wonderful if the past 30 years hadn't shown
almost no positive results. It's cold comfort to know that others
who come after you may benefit although you have failed to gain a
benefit. As a parent, your interest is your specific child and
getting him treated appropriately right now. The school's interest
may lie elsewhere.
In years past the education of a child was strictly up to the
parents. Sometimes they delegated that responsibility to tutors who
existed at the indulgence of the wealthy patron. Later schools were
set up by religious groups and only later did we get the idea of
community supported free and compulsory education. And as the
pendulum swings in so many aspects of life, we now find that groups
of co-religionists are moving to take back education from the public
sector, and more people are engaged in home schooling in America now
then at the time of our nation's founding.
I have serious reservations about home-schooling for the general
student population. But where there is an instance of a learning
difficulty, we feel the most effective way to overcome the problem
is with direct parental involvement in the home setting. By the use
of programs such as the Turbo-Tutor home study program, a parent can
act as a tutor with the child, working only 30 minutes a day, 5 days
a week and produce astounding results that the school can not match.
In addition to the remediation of the child's LD problems, this type
of approach builds even stronger lifetime bonds between the parents
and the child and restores the damaged self-image of the child which
has been brought on by frustration and failure in the conventional
school environment. The bottom line for this writer is that I have
seen first hand that the schools can't cure your child's LD problem.
I think I understand why they can't. And, I know that you can if you
have the will to do so.
