The bureaucrats in charge of “special education” in Connecticut are in desperate need of, well, special education.
The protocol in place for public schools to deal with “special needs” kids is a strategic, philosophical and financial mess — and yet, Connecticut just keeps plugging along, staggering from one lawsuit and “crisis” to another.
Of course, Connecticut is not alone in this. Many, if not most, of the states stumble over the murky mess that is “special education” — fed by court decisions, bewildering medical diagnoses, and litigation-inspired settlements that only make things worse.
At the core of the special-ed dilemma is every school principal and school superintendent’s nightmare: a million-dollar kid walks through the school door. Short of major hospitalization, the school system faces some obligation to educate that child, no matter what the “special need” — and the kid must be educated in some sort of approximation to the way the “normal” kids are educated — unless, of course, you can work out a deal to send the kid off to a multi-zillion-dollar-a-year special school to which the family agrees.
The “special” quality of the special education is sort of written into law, and educational regulation, and the threat of lawsuits from parents who want their kids to receive “the same kind of education as everyone else.” In theory, no school system is too small, too rural, too urban-nightmarish, or too beleaguered to opt out of the legal obligation.
For about the 8,000th time in recent memory, the Hartford schools are facing a complaint, filed this time by Greater Hartford Legal Aid, that its special ed kids with emotional problems are not being provided in many cases with out-of-district clinical settings. This follows a slap on the nose from the state Department of Education, insisting that the city do a better job with such kids.
It goes on all over the state; indeed, all over the country. The best “solution” in recent years was put forth by Jeb Bush when he was governor of Florida. Jeb cranked up a voucher system for parents with kids in need of special education. In theory, they can take the money or not, and put the kid almost anywhere they wanted, from the regular public school classroom to an expensive clinic far, far away.
Other states are experimenting with the voucher system for special ed; Connecticut resists anything that smacks of market forces at work in education.
The frustration in Connecticut relates to the size of the state, the number and size of the school districts, and the financial resources available to do the right thing.
The state’s multiplicity of tiny school districts are simply not the logical way to deal with special ed cases — case-by-case, tiny district by tiny district. With a state as small as Connecticut, and in a state with enough money to experiment, the special ed legal responsibilities should be state-wide, or, at the least, regional, so that individual school districts aren’t faced with a fiscal surprise each new school year for which they are not financially or educationally able to cope.
As for the vouchers, the potential to send your child somewhere other than his “regular” school district avoids many of the murky lawsuits that litter the courts, as puzzled judged attempt to sort out how “special” any particular child may be — and whether the local school is doing what is appropriate.
The other option for Connecticut is to do nothing. I’m sure Hartford will get everything just right this time.
Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
