Blog A5: Going to School Documentary

 Going to School Documentary

0:28- "Before Congress passed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1975, millions of children received inadequate special education services and at least one million children were prevented from attending schools altogether.

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21:00-  "The Los Angeles Unified School District was accused of systematically violating the civil rights of its 65,000 special education students in a class action lawsuit filed in 1993.  Individualized Education Programs were not being followed or even created.  Special education services were not being provided in a timely manner, nor were children being identified for these services. Student files were lost.  Parents found themselves ignored by the schools, their concerns dismissed."

This stood out to me because it reminds me of most laws put into place to protect ALL students.  For instance my 8th grade class learns about Brown vs the Board of Education in conjunction with Ruby Bridges' story.  We talk about how Brown vs the Board of Education led to the desegregation of schools, and Ruby Bridges' story shows how some states were denying that law/change and how this went against students' of color civil liberties.  The same goes with students with disabilities.  I do feel like students with IEPs are treated according to the law, and special education is taken seriously at our school because "it's a federal law"; however, I do come from a time that students were only really in our general population if they could navigate the school.  I went to school with 1 student in a wheelchair and 1 blind student, they were in the general population and we saw them in the hallway.  I didn't even realize we had severe and profound, or that we had special educators in my high school until I noticed them in my yearbook a year ago.

6:43- "Sally Sewell moved from special education day classes to all regular classes four years ago.  The transition was not easy.  School after school in the family's neighborhood found small reasons to refuse enrollment for this girl...  'Cowan was the one that opened their doors to us. She got to Cowan in the middle of 3rd grade year.  They accepted her so openly and wholeheartedly. The first day she was in there, they had to put a new table in, they had to switch her whole class around.'"

This makes me so upset because I know schools do this, but HOW?!  What reasoning could be legal?  Shouldn't schools, by law, mitigate and fix any "small issues" so that these students can also be part of that school?  Clearly Sally's family was able to find this in Cowan School.  They moved things around, got furniture that suited her wheelchair, and were able to have her learn the social norms of school by the next year.  Watching Sally's mom talk about it showed how important this acceptance really was for not only Sally but her parents.

36:22- "I think we've talked a lot in most districts, not just this district, about all children. But it's been more rhetoric than practice."- Dr. Ramon Cortines (Superintendent) 

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56:23- "There are never going to be the meeting of the instructional goals that you have with a fully able child.  When you have someone that's that severely handicapped, the point is including a person that is part of our society in that society.  And it should happen here.  It should happen in a country like ours.  What more do we have to offer the world than our receptivity and our openness to deal with everything?"

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1:00- "A complaint filed with the consent decree administrators resulted in changes at El Sereno, including plans for a new main entrance with a ramp."  

It is clear that we have adults in special education that feel like we need more.  We need to see all children as important, not just those that give the schools high test scores.  ALL students need to be educated and included in our society.  Many students with disabilities can find their place in our society, and like most things education is what gives people the key to a place in society.  Our severely handicapped students need programs that can help them feel like part of our society, and not like the dirty little secret that many parents used to keep locked up in doors our in facilities for the disabled.  Why do complaints need to be filed or lawsuits for public school LEAs to follow the federal LAWs?  The parents of students with disabilities have so much on their plate, without the expectation that they must know all the laws and keep institutions accountable all the time.  That should not be the expectation in our educational system or society.

An argument presented by Richard Cohen is that all students deserve an education that is inclusive, meets their needs legally, and fosters a sense of belonging in our society, but that many districts find themselves in negative situations for not complying with the basic needs of the IDEA and continuing to find ways to segregate students with disabilities.