Education Policy Proposal #3: Repeal IDEA

I’ve gone through the low-hanging fruit of my ideas for presidential campaign education policies. Now we’re into the changes that take on laws and Supreme Court decisions.

And so this dive into “special education”, the mother of all ed spending sinkholes.

We’ve been living in the world of IDEA for forty years. IDEA forces the states to provide free and appropriate education to all disabled students in the least restrictive environment.

Special ed is the poster child for primer #5 and the courts’ unthinking disregard for costs. In most special ed cases, the courts read the law in the manner most favorable to the parents, who don’t have to pay court costs if they win, even if the losing school or district operated in good faith.

While IDEA promises that the federal government will pay 40% of sped services, the feds have never coughed up more than 15-20% while always telling the states to pay more. What’s more? Well, in 2013, the federal allocation for special education was $12.8 billion. That’s less than a fifth.

States all have varying percentages of special education students, which suggests that classifications are more opinion than diagnosis. But regardless of the definition, research hasn’t revealed any promising practices to give those with mild learning disabilities higher test scores or better engagement. And that’s just where academic improvement might be possible. In many cases, expensive services are provided with no expectation of academic improvement.

“Special ed” is a huge, complex canvas of services, and definitions invoke thoughts of the five blind guys and a camel so far as the public is concerned, so it may not mean what you think it means. The feds collect data on the following narrow definitions but most general education teachers think in terms of broad categories:

1. Learning disabilities: ADHD, executive function, auditory processing.

2. Emotional disturbances/mental illness: See definition
3. Physical handicaps: wheelchairs, blindness, diabetes, and the ilk. No cognitive issues.
4. Moderate mental handicaps: The highest of the low IQs, or educable.
5. Severely handicapped: Eventual institution inhabitants, or assisted living. At best, “trainable”. At worst, this.

The role of special ed teacher varies, but they all have one common role: overseeing compliance. Their jobs have a substantial paperwork burden: producing the Individualized Education Plans in accordance with federal law. They schedule and run the review meetings, deliver IEPs to gen ed teachers.

High school special ed teachers for group 1 can’t be academically knowledgeable in all subjects, so they are basically case managers who run study halls, a full period that designated special ed kids can use to complete tests or do homework (or do nothing, as is often the case). They also do much of the assessment work for initiating IEPs. In this, they are akin to life-coaches or social workers. Since they are working with a lower level of academics, elementary sped teachers are more likely to be instructing students, whether in in self-contained classrooms designing easier lessons for students with mild learning disabilities, or in a pull-out class that would be called “study hall” in high school.

Group 1 sped teachers also manage group 3 student plans (e.g., wheelchair bound, diabetics) with no cognitive disabilities. These students, who don’t usually have study halls, are also more likely to be handled with 504 plans. They need health or access accommodations, often have expensive aides to see to their needs during the day. Other handicaps (visual, auditory) usually require a specialist credentialed in that disability, as well as an IEP.

Mildly retarded and emotionally troubled students (groups 2 and 4) are usually in self-contained classrooms by high school. They have little contact with general ed students on average, and are taught middle school level material by a special education teacher. At the elementary school level, general ed and special ed teachers share these responsibilities (here’s where the inclusion and mainstreaming debates are the sharpest).

Teachers who work with group 5 “students” at any age are providing specialized day care.

All sped teachers work with a wide range of aides, from those who help handicapped kids use the bathrooms, to those who lead blind children around, to those who help relate to the emotionally disturbed kids to those who babysit severely disabled children who can’t walk, talk, or relate on a scale handled by k-12.

I say none of this to be dismissive or cruel. Sped teachers I work with (the case managers with study halls) and their aides are caring and realistic; sped teachers who work with mentally limited students are incredibly gifted and dedicated, in my experience. But a massive chunk of them are not doing what we would normally refer to as teaching, and in another world we’d be able to question whether we are getting our money’s worth generating paperwork for the feds.

I don’t want to make feds the only bogeyman here. States are greedy for federal dollars, and special education spending gets more expensive each year for reasons unknown. Education has been put under tremendous additional constraints over the past 40 years, and the states should be asking why the hell they are forced to pour funds into a service that takes precedence over all the other needs in their district. Why should they be paying for aides to change diapers instead of giving study halls for disadvantaged kids who struggle academically? Why are they spending teacher head count and sections on study halls and case managers—especially since no evidence shows that pull outs and extended time improves academic outcomes of kids with executive function issues?

One (or more!) of the Republican candidates (pretty much has to be Republican) should emblazon “REPEAL IDEA” on his education policy webpage.

He could call it “state choice”.

Sure. Let states decide how to provide education, special or general. All special education services won’t instantly appear on the chopping block. But not having the federal courts hanging over every parent’s demands, cheerfully adding zeros to every expense, they might…well, trim. After a while, even cut.

Remember, many disabled students are still protected with 504 plans, which aren’t part of IDEA. Moreover, there’s this other federal law that doesn’t hesitate to interfere in state and local affairs if judges feel that people with disabilities aren’t getting their due. But allow states to decide if they want to bow to judges wishes in public schools, or provide separate facilities, without the anvils of FAPE and LRE mandates hanging over them.

Let the states and voters decide how to provide services for those students who can’t be educated within the K-12 framework, and how much support to give students with learning disabilities as opposed to disadvantaged students, arts education–or hey, even exceptionally bright students. If these services were left to the states, parents and other disability advocates could duke it out with other parent interests. And if some districts want to cut some special education services to keep the athletic teams, then states can decide based on the PR/Twitter storms, not federal law. (notice the line about “Athletics represent one of the largest costs that the school system carries that isn’t mandated by law.”? Think Fairfax parents would trade in some sped study halls for a football team?)

I make this sound so easy, don’t I? New York City alone has something like 38,000 special ed teachers. The National Association of Special Education Teachers will not be pleased. Nor will the teachers’ unions, I’m thinking.

But actual teachers? the rest of them? Maybe not quite so unhappy. Teachers see lines drawn and services provided to sped kids with no academic issues when gen ed kids who struggle academically get no services because they don’t have a disability, or economically disadvantaged kids who don’t qualify for special education resources, extra time, and study halls but could clearly benefit. Furthermore, elementary teachers are often….unenthused about the required inclusion of moderately to severely disabled students they have to cope with and pretend to educate in addition to their usual rambunctious kids with an already wide range of abilities.

Naturally, any teacher displeasure pales next to the onslaught of sped parental fury at the notion of killing IDEA, the massive anvil they have on the scales when making demands of their schools for their kids.

Kill SPED! doesn’t have the same ring or instant recognition of Ban College Remediation! or Bring Back Tracking!

But special education mandates are not only shockingly pricey straitjackets on schools, but a forcibly applied value system that many Americans don’t entirely share, at least not when it comes to stripping resources from their public schools. Politicians who face down the inevitable shaming attempts that would accompany this proposal could really open up the debate to reveal what Americans really want in their education system, as opposed to services they’ve been forced to pay for.

Next up, the really hard-core option to consider: Make K-12 Education Citizens Only.

The Fallacy at the Heart of All Reform

Rick Hess  often tells education leaders to get over their “allergy” to policy. The first time I read this, I couldn’t  figure out what he was talking about, since education leaders are, for the most part, all about policy. (Teachers are another matter; they could give three nickels for policy.)

But Hess isn’t really mad at education leaders for not involving themselves in policy. He’s chastising them for  not agreeing with politicians on their current policy mandates:

Let me put it this way. If you were an elected official and were responsible for elementary schools where only half of kids are reading at grade level and high schools where only fifty percent of students are graduating, it’d be pretty understandable (and laudable, even) to think you can’t simply trust the educators to do the right thing.

Gosh. Those poor elected officials, trudging along, minding their own business, forced—yea, I say forced!–into the educational arena by the sheer incompetence of schools that can’t get their kids to read at grade level. Let us all bleed for them.

But while we are slitting our veins for a few ounces, some questions: what is this “grade level” he speaks of? And what are the academic expectations of a high school graduate? In fact, when did we declare that everyone should graduate high school, and why? When did we establish guidelines of what appropriate standards are? And aren’t those….you know, it kills me to bring it up, but aren’t those state responsibilities?

Yes, yes, I can hear the reply now. Of course it’s a state responsibility, constitution, blah blah blah. In fact the high school movement, the uniquely American push to increase access to a high school education, was a local movement. But the states want federal money, so naturally the federal government has an oversight role.

But when did the feds start giving the states money for education? Well, that would be when the states started incurring costs imposed upon public schools either by federal law or federal court fiat.

First up, of course, was the Elementary and Secondary Education Act’s Title I, designed to improve educational outcomes for the poor. More money would help the poor and close the achievement gap, so the thinking went–and still goes, although the Coleman Report, issued a year later, established that school spending had far less to do with student outcomes than student SES and background. But the expectation was set into law—all outcomes should be equal. No research, no science, no school has ever proven this out. It was just the sort of blithe expectation we had during the civil rights era that certainly seemed to be true. Unfortunately, when that expectation didn’t prove out, no one seemed to recall that we had no proof that it could ever be true. They just looked for someone else to blame. So the federal dollars came with more and more expectations, demanding an outcome that hadn’t ever been established as realistic to start with.

But Title I was just the start. In 1974, the Supreme Court, in Lau vs. Nichols, required the schools to educate kids in their native languages (ironically, this demand originated from the Asian community; bet they’re happy about that one now!). Then the Court told the schools that they have to educate illegal immigrants in Plyler vs. Doe, denying that there might be a “compelling state interest” in educating only those here legally. Don’t forget busing, disparate impact, free and appropriate education, inclusion….they cover all these court cases in ed school, did you know?

Meanwhile, Congress is busy declaring that children with mental and physical disabilities are guaranteed a free and appropriate public education, regardless of the cost, with a guaranteed Individualized Education Plan following when IDEA is passed in 1990.

So the feds are placing increasing burdens on the local school systems, often in the form of unfunded mandates, other times adding dollars with strings of steel.

These reforms were almost exclusively driven by progressives—liberals who believe that educational inequality is caused by unequal spending, white privilege, racism, prejudice, discrimination….you know that drill, too. Progressives were intent on improving access. While it’s likely that they, too, thought that access would end the achievement gap, they adjusted quickly when that expectation didn’t prove out. By the 80s, progressives in educational policy almost entirely anti-testing. They pooh-poohed SAT scores as racist and culturally biased. They instituted the multi-culti curricum, softened analytical requirements as much as possible whilst giving lip service to that all important “critical thinking”, declared tracking or other forms of ability grouping by demonstrated ability as another means of whites maintaining their institutional privilege, and declared that academic achievement could be demonstrated in many ways. To the extent possible, they ignored or downplayed demonstrated achievement in favor of a student’s effort, community service, and dedication to social justice.

So the original federal mandates were all initiated by progressives.

In contrast, the people we now call “reformers” (that I often refer to as “eduformers”) were largely conservatives. Checker Finn, Mike Petrilli, the Thernstroms, and Diane Ravitch before her switch—all policy wonks in Republican administrations or organizations (except Rotherham worked in a Democrat administration.)

The original reform movement originated as anti-progressive reform. Bill Bennett, in many ways the ur-Reformer, began his stint in the public eye by opposing or castigating many of the progressive mandates. He did his best to end native language instruction when he was Ed Sec, was pro-tracking, against affirmative action, and often castigated teacher unions as instruments of political indoctrination. Back in the 80s and 90s, Checker Finn lambasted the anti-tracking push and derided racial or economic integration as an end to itself, arguing that the important outcome was safe schools with effective teachers, not an obsession with numerical balance. Rare were the reformers who weren’t adamantly in favor of tracking, skeptical of mainstreaming special education kids, and opposed to bilingual education in native language. Educating illegal immigrants is possibly the only area in which reformers might have originally agreed with progressives (and consequently stand in stark disagreement with many parents).

They’ve softened this approach in recent years. For example, Mike Petrilli now writes about differentiation, and can be seen here telling a clearly skeptical, but not oppositional, Checker Finn about the way that differentiation avoids the bad old days of racially segregated approach of tracking. While many reformers used to openly oppose affirmative action, now they’re just really quiet about it, or promote charters for suburban families or selective public schools, both of which are just tracking in a different form (or reform, hyuk). No reformer has ever dared take on the special education mandates and the parental torrents of rage that would turn in his direction were he to be so foolish; instead, they’ll just talk up the charters that get to skate those mandates.

So, for the first twenty to thirty years, progressives dramatically reformed public education through federal interventions. Conservatives opposed many of the initiatives. Progressives denounced opposition as racist and elitist. Conservatives tried to hold progressives responsible for these initiatives through accountability, and declared that parents needed more choice in schools, to get away from the forced control imposed by the progressive viewpoint. Progressives continued to denounce opposition as racist and elitist.

Finally, in the late 90s, conservatives figured out an effective strategy to gain support for their reforms. They took a card from the progressive deck, and demanded that the schools live up to the educational objectives the progressives had set for them. It wasn’t enough just to desegregate classes by race, income, language and learning status. The schools needed to demonstrate that they were teaching everyone equally, that there were “no excuses” for failure. Excuses were—wait for it—racist and elitist. Accountability became the club through which they could achieve choice, and choice would weaken public schools, thus weakening progressives and—not to put too fine a point on it—unions, whose political power the reformers saw as the primary opponent of their political objectives. By demanding equal performance and softening or eliminating their opposition to tracking, bi-lingual education, and all the other progressive hot spots, they could beat the progressives on their head with their own club.

They’d finally figured out the unassailable rhetorical approach. Who could oppose setting mandates requiring everyone—of all races, incomes, and abilities—achieve proficiency? Only racists and elitists. Who could oppose punishing such failure with consequences? Only racists and elitists. Who could oppose giving parents and their students a way to escape from these horrible schools that fail to educate their students to proficiency? Yes, progressives with their excuses of poverty and culture and isolation—they’re the racists. The same people who gave lip service to equality are now fighting the reformers’ efforts to achieve the reality—so not only are progressives elitist and racist, they’re hypocrites, too!

And so, the current reform movement set new federal mandates, which takes those original mandates of the 70s and 80s and shoves them down schools’ throats, hoisting any progressive opposition on its own petard. Unions who opposed accountability on behalf of the teachers, who know full well that equal outcomes are utterly impossible, could now be castigated as anti-education, fat, entitled organizations who protected all the terrible teachers preventing the nation from reaching the dream that progressives started, the dream that progressives have now abandoned, that reformers are finally helping the nation reach. Over time, this approach picked up some new democrats, who aren’t overly fond of unions and tend to sneer at the reputedly low educational achievement of teachers, and the billionaires who Diane Ravitch, now on the other side, excoriates regularly for finding a new hobby.

I’m no fan of progressives, so it’s pretty amusing watching them sputter. They can’t say, “WTF? We never thought everyone would actually achieve at the same level, dammit! We wanted everything to look equal, so that we could browbeat employers and colleges! Tests are racist!” Besides, it’s their idiotic mandates we’re all being forced to live up to now, and they had no more basis for demanding them than reformers do in enforcing them.

So here we are. Schools are stuck with the outcome of two different waves of political reform—first, the progressive mandates designed to enforce surface “equality” of their dreams, then the reforms mandated by conservatives to make the surface equality a reality, which they knew was impossible but would give them a tool to break progressives and, more importantly, unions.

From the schools’ point of view, all these mandates, progressive or “reform” are alike in one key sense: they are bent on imposing political and ideological mandates that haven’t the slightest link to educational validity.

No one has ever made an effective case that non-native speakers can be educated as well as native speakers, regardless of the method used. No one has ever established that integration, racial or economic, improves educational outcomes. No one has ever demonstrated that blacks or Hispanics can achieve at the same average level as whites (or that whites can achieve at the same level as Asians, although no one gets worked up about that gap), nor has anyone ever demonstrated that poor students can achieve equally with their higher-income peers. No one has ever established that kids with IQs below 90 can achieve at the same level as kids with IQs above 100, or examined the difference in outcomes of educating kids with high vs. low motivation. And the only thing that has changed in forty years is that anyone who points this out will now be labelled elitist and racist by both sides of the educational debate, instead of just one.

So back to Hess. Hess’s rationale for political interference starts with the premise that low test scores means failing schools. When Hess says that a politician whose district schools show half or more kids reading below grade level can’t trust educators to do the right thing, he is assuming that half or more kids reading below grade level is a bad result.

Hess is using exactly the same rationale that progressives did when they labelled schools racist/elitist/pick your ist for enrolling fewer blacks, Hispanics, poor kids or dyslexics in advanced classes. It’s the fallacy at the heart of all reform: that all kids can achieve equally.

We don’t know that this is true. In order to call test scores “low”, we assume that all populations can achieve to the same average ability. We don’t know that they can. All available evidence says that they can not, that race, special education status, and poverty are not excuses but genuine, reliable predictors of lower achievement.

But thanks to the combined efforts of progressives and eduformers and their blithe lack of interest in the validity of their expectations, schools are now stuck with mandates that force them to pretend that all students can achieve equally to the same average ability, even though no research supports this. When Virginia bit the bullet to acknowledge that race is in some way related to achievement (note: I don’t think race is a direct factor, just an unsettling proxy), they were browbeaten and hammered into backing down, although I was cheered to see they still used race for achievement goals.

Rick Hess is wrong in saying that education leaders are “allergic” to policy. They are “allergic” to mandates with no relationship to reality. And his sympathy for political leaders who are dragged in reluctantly, poor folks, to spare the kids from uncaring, dysfunctional schools is also misplaced. The problem isn’t the schools. The problem is the mandates—both progressive and reform. The problem is the imposition of political and ideological objectives into the educational world, screaming and howling and suing for five impossible things before breakfast.

*Yeah, I started writing this a month ago and got distracted.