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The U.S. Supreme Court this past April revisited the highly contentious issue of public funding of private school placements for learning disabled children. Two years ago the Court attempted to address this long standing issue (I've been aware of these tensions for two decades) but deadlocked 4-4 with Justice Arthur Kennedy mysteriously (never explained) recusing himself from the decision.
Public school officials (reading Superintendents and Directors of Special Services) have been desperate for a clarification on the limits of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) for years. This federal law mandates an individualized optimal education for all, but the federal government has never been close to providing full funding for all the mandated services. The financial burden has fallen heavily on individual school districts leading to the dynamic that pits the rights of the individual versus the rights of the community.
You see this tension played out regularly within the context of developing the Individualized Educational Plan (or IEP) for the child who is struggling learning wise or behaviorally (they are commonly joined together in, what we, in the industry, call "co-morbidity", especially learning problems and ADHD/ADD). At meetings with school personnel to assess for and develop the IEP, parents feel the potential adversarial qualities associated with a legal process instead of a more communal effort to help the child.
This is because the school districts are regularly advised by their legal counsels to help avoid making mistakes that might incur a costly suit to the school district. My sense is that school personnel genuinely want to help students be successful and assist the teachers on the front-lines who must instruct and manage potentially difficult to teach children (learning wise or behaviorally). However, the school district, without adequate funding from the federal government, also must attempt to conserve money that has been previously designated or reserved for the non-disabled majority of children in their general classrooms.
I recognized this tension 20 years ago and in my book, Running on Ritalin, that describes the cultural milieu of ADHD, I subtitled the chapter on learning disabilities and ADHD -- The Snake Eats Its Tail. The average learning disabled child placed into a small enrollment special day class costs the district about four times the education of the non-disabled child. If a child is placed in a private school setting, costs to the district can range from $20,000 to over six figures a year for residential "schools."
It is this last category -- placement in residential school for "learning" problems that is generating the most heat and controversy. In the case two years ago before the Supreme Court a very wealthy family sued the school district to pay for private school placement for their child who had never attended public school. In the current case before the court, a single mom with much less means is attempting to get funds for her son from the school to pay for residential placement for problems that appear primarily behavioral in nature (drug use, running away, oppositional behavior). Unlike the first child, this boy did attend a public high school but never tried a specialized public setting.
IDEA does not cover emotional problems per se. However, in a controversial administrative decision eighteen years ago, the Department of Human Services, under heavy lobbying pressure from drug company funded self-help groups like CHADD, added ADHD/ADD to the list of covered diagnoses of IDEA under the "otherwise health-impaired" (OHI) category. School psychologists predicted at the time that the vague definitions of ADHD, particularly in the borderline case, or its common association with learning problems and oppositional defiant disorder, would lead a rapid increase in the diagnosis. Indeed, the explosive twenty fold rise in the use of drugs like Ritalin and Adderall over the past two decades began in 1991, the same year ADHD was added to the IDEA covered diagnosis.
No matter -- I've been evaluating and treating children for ADHD for over thirty years and I can tell you that it's virtually impossible to distinguish the behavior symptoms of an under motivated adolescent with mild learning problems from that of a newly diagnosed teen ADD (I make the exception of a child that has struggled with impulsive behavior and hyperactivity since the toddler years -- even if he/she only comes to the doctor's attention as a teen for the first time). So the diagnosis become legal cover to allow for services and in its extreme, allows for a kind of extortion from institutions with deep pockets -- in this case the school districts.
There are many difficult to educate children who just won't make it in the regular classroom despite noble and vigorous efforts at inclusion. A very small minority of those children will not be able to live at home either (primarily for safety reasons -- threats of suicide, aggression towards others, running away). Very few families can afford residential placement (running about $40,000 to $60,000 annually). Diagnoses are stretched and contorted to justify or force school district participation in coming up with funding that is often negotiated between the family, their medical insurance company and the schools. School districts threatened with suits often just settle because it is cheaper -- but many have been hoping for more restrictive guidelines emanating from a Supreme Court decision if not by Congress.
For you see for every child funded by public education in a private residential setting you lose about one teacher's salary for the regular classroom. This places inevitable pressure with static or decreased funding to increase classroom size. As classroom size increases and the teacher can provide less individual attention and feedback, the borderline coping learning/behaviorally disabled child becomes more symptomatic and crosses the threshold into qualifying for services, leading to more funds designated for special ed away from the classroom and on it goes. The snake eats its tail.
I'm not certain what the solution is. The basic causes for this conundrum of care are deeply societal and I try at least to delineate them in my book, The Last Normal Child. I fear many will read this blog as anti-child and anti-special education. If so, the same criticism could be leveled at the thousands of special ed teachers and administrators who have devoted their careers (at a personal financial cost) to helping children with special needs. I believe some better balance on the public school funding issue for private placement must be reached. If not some, five to ten years from now there will be an even greater backlash by the general community over the needs of those who are labeled as different.
