Hey Disaboom, did ya miss me? :)
Here is a link to the remarks Gov. Palin made in Pittsburgh a few days ago on education for children with disabilities.
Personally, I applaud the efforts she's made to fund better education for these students, and I'm thrilled to hear that fully funding IDEA is one of her priorities.
However, I'm not so sure of what she says about school choice, here:
Even the best public school teacher or administrator cannot
rightfully take the place of a parent in making these choices. The
schools feel responsible for the education of many children, but a
parent alone is responsible for the life of each child. And in the case
of parents of children with disabilities, there are enough challenges
as it is, and our children will face more than enough closed doors
along the way. When our sons and daughters need better education, more
specialized training, and more individual attention, the doors of
opportunity should be open.
Like John McCain, I am a believer in providing more school choice
for families. The responsibility for the welfare of children rests
ultimately with mothers and fathers, and the power to choose should be
theirs as well. But this larger debate of public policy should not be
permitted to hinder the progress of special-needs students. Where their
lives, futures, and happiness are at stake, we should have no agenda
except to ease the path they are on. And the best way to do that is to
give their parents options.
I tend to be generally leery of "school choice." It strikes me as a way of avoiding the symptom, or providing a way for more children to get out of attending this or that failing public school, rather than seeking a cure for the disease through serious and lasting public school reform. I'm also not convinced that your average voucher does much. Yes, excellent private schools exist, but I doubt that a voucher offers enough for a child in a struggling school district to attend the sort of fantastic, elite, exclusive institution people think of when they hear the words "private school."
In the case of children with disabilities, though, I am less sure what to think. I myself went to very excellent public schools -- in all ways but one. When it came to the physical therapy I needed, or the adaptive phys ed classes, walking into those rooms was like walking into the Dark Ages. I saw behavior and treatment that shocked and appalled me, the kind of thing that the excellent teachers I had everywhere else would not have stood for for a moment.
And my disability is relatively mild. I remember once, as a kid, talking to a friend of mine about school. When she insisted she was happy at her private school for kids with disabilities, I was shocked and appalled. Who would want to be cordoned off, taken away from the other kids, coddled and protected at best, at worst considered something to quarantine? But growing up I realized that my friend very likely avoided the abusive behavior, lack of funds, and lack of training on the part of some of the public school's special ed people. Maybe not being mainstreamed was worth all that.
So maybe school choice is a good thing. That is, if Gov. Palin is really prepared, in a party that's leery of "tax and spend" even during economic booms, to fund it enough that it really makes sure the sort of things that happened to me don't frequently happen again. I'm not entirely convinced, as is probably clear, but if she does become Veep, we'll see. And if it's what's best, it's what's best.
But I still have the same concern I have about school choice/vouchers as a solution to The Public School Problem. Namely, if all the parents who can eagerly yank their kids with disabilities out of the public school system, what happens to the kids who remain? I gather that what she wants should mean none do, but I have to say I'm leery. How much taxing and spending is that going to require? How much money really follows the child?
Whether they remain because their parents, as mine did, believe that public schooling is best for children, or because even with that credit (or whatever) they just don't have the resources to send their kid to a school designed for them?
I fear that the answer will have to be that, like me, those kids will be in special ed programs that lack any meaningful funding. People who just barely know what to do will be put in positions of power over them before they're ready to handle it, and probably have too many kids to deal with at once. Those kids will get poor care at best and be mistreated by overworked and overwhelmed people at worst.
What's the answer? Surely I don't know. But I am, as I say here, somewhat alarmed by the suggestion that the public school system be left to rot. Not all kids with disabilities can grow wings and fly off to the fairyland of schools designed specifically for people like us.
