Steve and I went to observe a program for Ian for next year. It’s a transitional program for kids with high functioning autism or those with a few autistic-like characteristics. It’s housed in a regular elementary school. It’s a small school; it’s only for Kindergarten and first grade. The kids in the special needs classes are brought into the regular classrooms for their strong areas and then they work on their issues in the special needs class.
We’re not thrilled with having Ian in a special class. He’s higher functioning than the kids we observed today, but if he spends a lot of time in the regular classroom that might be okay.
Our other option was to keep him in a regular kindergarten here in town, but have a aide to help him out.
I think we’re going to go with the special program, because the school was so much better than our school in town. It is located in a wealthy area. It will mean a longer bus ride for poor Ian, but he’s going to have access to a better education. It’s a small school aimed at kids in the lower grades. They have an amazing program for informing parents about the kid’s progress and at-home training for parents. The staff were smart, energetic, and eager to please. It was a well-oiled machine. In this town, I would have set up systems to coordinate Ian’s therapists and create plans for parent-teacher coordination, because nothing exists like that here. His teacher here would have no training in dealing with unevenly skilled children, so I would have to educate her or bring in a consultant to help her.
This program isn’t going to be cheap. I think we finally have a friend in the administration, and I’m really grateful to her.
Steve walked and I walked away from the meeting thinking the same thing — our present school system isn’t good enough. For the most part, we’re very content in this town. Great house, good commute to work, regular folks in town. Should we move to a pricier town just for the schools?
Apt. 11d 
I’m a little confused at your talk of moving — is the special school something you have to foot the bill for because you live in the wrong town? Or is it that even the special school is not appropriate for your family? Or is it about the bus ride for Ian?
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I am thinking about my older kid, Jonah, too. He would be getting a lot more in another school. Right now, he’s got a meany teacher this year. Last week, she said that half the class isn’t going on to third grade. He came home sure that he’s going to fail.
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How about selling your house and renting in the ritzier school district (at least until you are sure that it’s suitable)? If you wait a year or two, the housing market will probably be in a better place.
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Are they good about pushing kids out into mainstream classrooms when they’re ready? (Our son’s school’s motto: “We love our kids and we want them out of here ASAP.”) Assuming that Ian can transition out sooner rather than later, if you don’t move then you’ll have to start training your current school system in advance of that transition. If the regular public schools in this new area are experienced with the transition process, that in and of itself is a big point in their favor.
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The schools says that they are all about mainstreaming. However, they all say that. We’ll have to monitor things. If we think that they’re being too slow about mainstreaming, we’ll pull him.
We’re not moving any time soon, but it’s just a question that is lingering over our heads. It’s hard to not think about it when the differences between these two school districts are so stark. And not just in terms of special education. My older kid’s education hasn’t been stellar either.
Money makes a difference. Period. End of story. Some kids can thrive in any kind of setting. Other kids really need the services that come in high tax areas.
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Is it wrong that the differences between the two areas are so stark? Or do our free-market advocates think that it’s acceptable that “the children who need services that come in high tax areas” only get them if they’re parents are wealthy enough?
Of course, many of the free-market advocates (and I’m stereotyping here) have argued that money doesn’t really make a difference. I’ve never believed that, and if I believe money makes a difference, then, how do we offer all children the education they “need”?
bj
PS: I can’t tell where this fits on the continuum of your posts Laura. Is it a political post or a personal one? As a personal one, I can’t see how you can do anything as a parent, but find the best possible place for Ian. As a political post, it’s a much more complicated question.
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bj,
Some school systems make a dollar go a lot further than others do. However, “free market” types are actually most passionate about creating a real market for education, so a lot of them want to attach funding to individual children, rather than to individual school districts. Then the money can follow the kids, rather than the kids following the money.
I think there’s a very good case to be made that funding for special ed is going to be a lot different than for standard education, since SPED is necessarily much more labor intensive, and hence far more expensive. In mainstream classes, you could significantly raise the student to teacher ratio (and hence cut costs), if you were using highly efficient pedagogy.
By the way, I wonder why there hasn’t been more of a move to import Europeans to teach science and math, those being the areas that American schools find most difficult to staff. (I’m choosing Europeans just because so many of them speak great English, but I know there are a lot of non-Europeans who would do just as well.)
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As always, the personal and the political overlap on this blog. Sorry if these posts are rather haphazard, but these transition points for Ian have always been very emotional and time consuming. Thank goodness the semester is over.
Yeah, it’s clearly wrong that poorer students aren’t getting the education that they need. It’s not even fair that my kid is getting merely an adequate education, while kids in wealthier towns are getting an excellent education.
School choicers say that choice will raise all boats. Competition will mean better schools in all communities. Incentives, including better pay for teachers, will be built in the system to improve conditions. They believe that bureaucracies will become less inefficient, freeing up more for classroom instruction.
There is a group who say that money doesn’t make a difference, but they aren’t always the school choice people.
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Laura:
The fact that the political and personal interact is why I read your blog, and why I find it so informative. So, keep the personal and political interacting by all means!
My comment was based on the fact that this entry is a real starting point for political discussion, but I am acutely aware of how hard it is to make decisions for our own children, and I didn’t want to add to the stress by using it as a starting point for political discussion.
bj
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The problem is that special ed costs so much more than the average cost per child. Unless there’s a way for a significant amount of money (equal to the real costs of quality special ed) to travel with the kid, there’s actually a disincentive for districts to offer decent special ed programs, as they just attract more high-cost kids. (How’s that for cynical?) That would just get worse w/ open competition.
At least now, there’s an incentive for districts to provide services that are at least good enough that judges don’t force them to pay to send kids to super-expensive private schools. (That’s the killer cycle that DC schools are in — because they’re not providing adequate services, they’re being forced to pay for lots of kids to go to private schools, which leaves less and less money for services.)
I’ve been reading some of the essays in The Elephant in the Playroom, and I just nearly lost it at the essay by the mom who wrote about how she nagged and nagged until she got her son into a great program in a NYC public school. But her takeaway was “this is what being the parent of a special needs kid requires” rather than any acknowledgment that her persistence just meant that her kid got in instead of some other kid whose parents didn’t know how to work the system.
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I feel a little differently about the “excellent education” kids in wealthier districts are getting. I see those kids come out of those great high schools and colleges, and get to the workplace … and quite often, flop. On the other hand I also see kids coming from what Laura called adequate school districts and state colleges and do quite well in the real world. I guess I just don’t buy the long-term effects of the actual education gotten in (typically) wealthy suburbs. Not to mention the suicide rates, etc. My husband and I specifically kept our kids out of the exam school system in Chicago. We just don’t think it’s the best preparation for a good life.
That said, I’m squarely with Elizabeth: special ed should be funded nationally, via something akin to medicaid. That’s the only way to remove the disincentive and stop the tension between the parents of special ed kids and the other parents. I think we parents need to become more politicized about this situation, frankly. Somehow we’ve all ended up fighting over crumbs when we should be marching on Washington. Those who prefer to spend this country’s resources defending oil imports love it that way, I’m sure.
(Total tangent: I believe the same thing about support for maternity leave. In both cases funding it nationally makes it a shared burden, just as the benefit the nation gets from a well-raised child is a shared benefit.)
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Yeah, inequities upon inequities. Educated, wealthy parents do help out their kids enormously, but that is the result of the crappy system we have. Blame the system, not the parents. The special ed parents have so much on their plate already.
Knowing how to game system isn’t solely for the parents of special ed kids. Educated parents are also holding their regular kids back an extra year, they’re hiring tutors to help their kids with IQ tests, they’re finding out about gifted and talented programs, they’re playing nice with the principals and administrators.
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Catherine Johnson of kitchentablemath.blogspot.com (she’s who I’d like to be when I grow up), says that lavish funding can be a curse, in part because schools lose a sense of what their priorities should be. She’s in Westchester, and her blog chronicles life as a parent at a public middle school that spends something like 19K a year per student. Interestingly, despite the fact that the Irvington community is highly elite and the children are academically-minded, the school manages (through its tracking system) to produce a bell curve distribution. Only a minority of the kids are on track to take 8th grade algebra. (Algebra in 8th grade is what kids need to keep calculus alive as an option for high school.)
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Jay Matthews, the education reporter, has a 1998 book called “Class Matters: What’s Wrong (and Right) with America’s Best Public High Schools.” Things may have changed since he did the research for the book, but the main problem he identified was extreme tracking and gate-keeping. Matthews praises AP in Class struggle and he has a newish book out now touting the virtues of International Baccalaureate.
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Laura, I don’t blame anyone for doing the best for their kid, even if the system makes it a zero-sum game. But a little self-awareness goes a long way.
I know that affluent parents of NT (neuro-typical) kids use their money to buy advantages too. But the difference is that the middle class NT kid whose parents don’t do all that crap will probably be just fine anyway. Not so true for special ed.
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My sense is that the underlying problem is the use of property taxes for education. As long as that is the primary funding mechanism, fundamental inequities are inescapable. In Massachusetts, the worst dysfunction is the competition betweeen “special ed” and “regular ed” for a limited pool of local, property-tax resources. Yes, the state kicks in some funds, but I have more than once felt the stares, and heard the whispered comments, of “regular ed” parents complaining about all the money that is going to “special ed,” while music and art programs get cut. It doesn’t have to be that way, but no one at the state level has the courage to take on the big problem of the reliance on property taxes and the need for more, and more equitable, state-level funding of special ed.
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I know a lot about school systems in New Jersey (at least, here in South Jersey), and what I have found is pretty surprising.
I absolutely agree, of course, that the ritzy school districts provide a much better quality education, offer more assistance, and are probably much better for most types of children.
I have also found, however, that the ritzy districts also spend a lot less per pupil that the average and poor districts (what we Jerseyites call “Abbott Districts”).
http://edlawcenter.org/ELCPublic/elcnews_pr_041008_NewJerseyLeadsNation.htm
When we hear about the huge funding inequalities in New York or Connecticut, we don’t hear that New Jersey has essentially eliminated them, but still has the exact same problems.
So, while New Jersey is pretty generous (in providing partial state funding, in the “ritzy districts” like mine (I like in the rancher amongst the mansions) there is gobs more parental involvement and volunteering — lots of SAHMs to help out. There are also fewer “classified” kids as a percentage, so there are more resources to devote the them. And there are fewer “problem families” that gobble up so much of the administrators’ time, and allow them to be more helpful to more “normal” problems.
My district paid $10,987 per kid in ’05-’06. Camden (the “worst” district, paid $14,454.)
I, of course, do not know where you live, but I wouldn’t be surprised that the “wealthy” districts paid the same or less per pupil than yours. You can search by district here:
http://www.state.nj.us/education/guide/2007/csgsearch.shtml
This is the dark secret of school funding advocates. More money really doesn’t make much of a difference — or rather, you’d have to give poorer districts much more than the richer districts have to provide an equal education.
I sympathize, absolutely, that it seems unfair. But I also think that, if funding was equalized we would not end up with great education in every district, but rather a lot more mediocrity.
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We have a pretty good school district here, I think. I suppose there are parents who are doing all sorts of exotic stuff to give their NT kids a leg up in school but I don’t really have it shoved into my face on a regular basis. I think you notice it more when you’re over-anxious about your own kids (not a knock on Laura’s concerns about Ian and his options, which I think are a different kettle of fish). Some of this is a game which you can only win by choosing not to play–I would connect this with my general trust in the resiliency of children, which I think many middle-class educated parents have lost for some complicated reasons.
On the case of special ed, I think the questions it poses are part of a broad class of issues related to the high cost of some services in public institutions. It’s very important that our public schools have a variety of services for children with special educational needs, but on the other hand, that can’t be an unlimited obligation. You’ve been very eloquent about the specificity of Ian’s situation, Laura, that he shouldn’t just be classified in some generic “autism” category; what he seems to need is a normal classroom but with an educator around that is as knowledgeable as you are as his mother about the specificity of his needs and knowledgeable about the specific kinds of educational interventions that would help him. But that basically means a teacher or aide just for him, and that solution doesn’t scale up in a public institution. Something’s got to be imperfect or a compromise, and I guess the question for you has to be when the line of inevitable imperfection is crossed to the point of unacceptability.
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Thanks, guys. Oh, the decisions that must be made in a couple of weeks. Yes, there will be many compromises. No matter how excellent a special education class is, it is still a separate education. And separate is always unequal.
I’ve had some private conversations with the school principal in our town. She said they would be happy to take Ian. We might try him out in the special school and then take him out if they aren’t mainstreaming him fast enough.
Elizabeth, totally agree about self-awareness.
Sam, the zero-sum game is rough for the parents of special ed kids. Sorry, you’ve gotten grief about it. One guy on our town council said in the town paper that they don’t want to build any more houses in town, just in case a kid with autism moves into town. Nice, huh?
Ragtime, interesting data. I’ll have to look it over tomorrow. thanks.
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Ragtime,
In comparing school funding, we’d also need to figure in school fundraising, as well as the money schools are able to get from parents for various odds and ends for the class (field trips, special events, etc). Incidentally, it seems like there is a lot of variation in how much parent volunteering/participation schools are willing to take, so some schools are in effect walking away from “funding”.
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I know exactly how hard it is to make these decisions. I’m a New Jerseyan with a daughter in special ed. We moved from a blue-collar town to a more prosperous town specifically for the schools (and, YES, the schools are better here). Whenever I have an attack of liberal guilt, I remind myself that Thurgood Marshall sent his kids to Phillips Exeter.
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Laura,
Yes, money makes a difference!!! We live in rural New England in the town that is right next to (as in a seamless divide) the college town. Our local school (less than a mile from the college town school) is lousy. The college town public elementary school has an endowment! Yes, an endowment!
That said, my son has aspergers and was in our local school when he was first diagnosed. His teacher knew nothing about how to teach him. I had to quote MA state law during the first IEP meeting in order to get services for him. The coordinator was clueless. Friends of ours (with a child with Aspergers) filed a complaint about the school with the department of education and WON!
This past year we were able to school choice him into the college town school. When I talked to his new teacher about aspergers, she said, “oh yeah, I suspected it when I first met him. I’ve worked with a LOT of aspergers kids over the years.” I might have hugged her…I don’t remember. But I did refrain from saying, “I love you,” to her even though that was what was going through my head. I didn’t want her to think I was nuts. It was a good move and E’s had a great year.
And yet, when I am talking with folks and have to explain that E’s going to school in ….town, I find myself always qualifying it with, “I work at the college, DH works in town, it’s just so much better for us all around.” Is is guilt because I’m taking advantages of services that aren’t really mine? Is it guilt because I was able to advocate for my child and get him the help he needed? I don’t know.
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Tim said:
“what he seems to need is a normal classroom but with an educator around that is as knowledgeable as you are as his mother about the specificity of his needs and knowledgeable about the specific kinds of educational interventions that would help him. But that basically means a teacher or aide just for him, and that solution doesn’t scale up in a public institution. Something’s got to be imperfect or a compromise, and I guess the question for you has to be when the line of inevitable imperfection is crossed to the point of unacceptability.”
Tim — I have to heartily disagree with you. Borderline kids like this (and mine)often need a one-on-one aide in K and first grade until they “know the drill” and if all goes well, can get weaned off the aide for most, if not all school hours. In the long run, investing in what it takes to get that kid mainstreamed is going to cost the system less than another decade of special ed. It’s a good investment.
My kid had a full-time aide in K – he’s now in fourth grade and aideless. An aide doesn’t need to be a full-fledged teacher – they just need to be well-trained.
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Allison,
That’s interesting (and very heartening) to hear that Asperger’s kids can grow out of needing an aide.
With regard to your example of local school vs. college town school, the money may be only half (or less) of the difference, with the other half consisting of the school demographics. College folk are going to be a lot more academically minded and a lot more sophisticated about the K-MD/PHD/JD and special ed rat mazes, so a school that serves them is going to be different. There’s also the possibility that the school has a number of faculty spouses on staff.
We are sending our daughter to kindergarten this fall at a private religious school that is closely affiliated with a large university. The head administrators are married to university faculty, a number of teachers are married to faculty, graduate students come and teach, and the student body consists largely of university kids. We haven’t started yet, so I don’t know what the experience will be like, but I suspect that it probably has a lot in common with your college town public school. I would hesitate to generalize from this sort of school, because a normal school couldn’t buy those kind of human resources, no matter how much money they had to spend.
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In comparing school funding, we’d also need to figure in school fundraising, as well as the money schools are able to get from parents for various odds and ends for the class (field trips, special events, etc).
I assume that is done, at least to a certain degree, since the poorer districts tend to spend more per student than the richer ones in New Jersey. In terms of valuing certain things, however, I don’t think that extra money is really the issue.
I do not doubt, as mominma says above, that in the poorer district the teacher didn’t know how to teach her son and the coordinator was clueless. That’s what happens. Throwing more money at the issue isn’t going to suddenly make everyone in education at-or-above average. And, as New Jersey demonstrates, it really has very little to do with differential funding. Teachers would rather teach in higher performing districts. Administrators consider it a “promotion” to move to an elite district. They know they will have community support and not have to fight with community leaders every year about the relative importance of the schools. For the vast majority of the best teachers and administrators (although certainly not all, bless their hearts), they want to be in the top districts — not simply the ones that may be able to pay them a few thousand dollars more per year.
In most places there is a teacher shortage at current salaries. Raising them enough so that we could fill all the slots would take huge sums of money. Now, imagine how much more money it would take to not only fill all of the slots, but fill them with people who are as talented as the most talented 20% or so that occupy the better districts. There simply isn’t enough money!
As I said, I sympathize with most of the points made, and I am certainly not trying to say, “Give up, the schools will always be horrible!” I just think that strategies that have, as their first step, to equalize school funding, or to add funding to poorer districts, are fundamentally misguided.
New Jersey has, essentially, achieved equality (or, if not, is pretty darned close). The results, however, have not budged.
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In my area, there are multiple districts with good schools; I made sure to live in one of them. We do pay a lot more in taxes. I believe it’s always worth it. If I were unsure about the schools, I would move. For us, it would be a no-brainer. But I understand that there are many factors involved.
Best of luck in making decisions about what to do about schooling for your son. Sorry about the bus ride, but the setting sounds great.
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We are currently suing the board Of Ed for special placement in a non-public school. Between the neuropsychs, the lawyers, and the time wasted it is a frustrating period of our lives.
We have spent over $10,000 this year alone (not counting his regular trips to his psychiatrist and psychologist) just to prove he needs services because he is not learning disabled. He has ADHD, tics (which he is teased about), socially isolates himself, and exhibits self-talk. He has not produced any work for 2 years but reads excessively. After taking him to many experts we have learned that he is gifted (he has a high IQ), comprehends on the 10th grade level (he is 8), and has extreme executive dysfunction issues. We learned that he was not on the autistic spectrum which made it harder. The school has hired a certified teacher out of their own budget to shadow him. But far as the Board of Ed is concerned, as long as he scores high on state exams then what is the problem. The Board of Ed want him in a state sponsored private school (but no one wanted a a non learning-disabled kid with a 145 IQ “won’t fit in here”) who reads Dickens for fun.
We have an excellent case and will probably win but then we cannot leave NYC because we will lose our funding. The school that he will attend is about 1 hour away by bus. We didn’t want this. It happened. NYU offered to send in a team when it all began but the school teacher refused (and this would have been at our expense, not the school board’s – but you can’t fight the union). The school bill will be about 60K/yr because a teacher refused to let the experts nip it in the bud when it all began. Now, it is impartial hearing and if we are lucky we can just negotiate a stipulation agreement. In the meantime we are taking a 60K gamble on a school in September – if we don’t win the bill is ours. And that is where the money comes into play. We can afford it – most people can’t.
I have a friend whose daughter is still reading on the K level in 4th grade but they are afraid to try and sue for a special school because they can’t afford the gamble. People have no idea what they are signing when they go to IEP meetings unless they have a good advocate (especially when the problems are too big for the school to handle). These people cost real money to some families.
Good luck with Jonah. My husband thinks he ta’d with you with in Binghamton for Weisband.
Susan (still slogging it out in NYC)
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Susan,
Wow! I’ve heard that some children are both special needs and gifted, but that’s amazing. I’m thinking Ian also falls into that category. Catherine Johnson (kitchentablemath.blogspot.com) has also quoted an expert who says that he often sees families with two kids, one gifted and one with autism.
By the way, have you ever heard of “Re-Forming Gifted Education” by Karen Rogers? I’ve just started it and I’m really impressed. She says that gifted kids should get an IEP. Catherine Johnson thinks that all kids should, and I am beginning to think she’s right.
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Susan, your husband TAed with Weisband? I was just an undergrad at Binghamton, so I didn’t TA, but I took his class and worshiped him like all the other pol sci geeks. I still remember his high energy lectures.
Your son sounds very similar to mine. Smart, but with issues. Good luck working with the NYC bureaucracy. Another commenter here has dealt with them quite a bit and has horror stories.
We’ve also spent quite a bit of our own money on therapies and supplementary services. We haven’t had to pay for an advocate yet, but we’ve put the money aside for that.
Amy, totally agree that all kids should have an IEP. The school system isn’t very good at dealing with kids who fall outside the boundaries of average. I’ve come to accept that, and we work hard to make up for whatever the schools don’t give our kids.
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