‘Puter was very pleased to receive several thoughtful missives regarding his posting on special ed’s negative impact on general ed. Both correspondents herein are, as you will see, parents of special ed students. ‘Puter was happy to discover much common ground among all three positions.

‘Puter’s going to post much of the correspondence without immediate comment. ‘Puter intends to reply with further thoughts, and hopefully elucidation, later today or tomorrow. For now, please consider the following missives, pasted without editing content.

From a female correspondent, whom we will call Bob, currently in the Gormogons’ witness protection program (ours is so much better than the federal government’s):

OK, ‘Puter – apologies for not being able to take the time for a better crafted and tempered reaction to your post on special ed…but I have to get to work, and hope you’ll receive this in the spirit intended – here goes.

Heck yeah, thoughtless mainstreaming policies are a bad idea. I agree that the extent of the problem should be quantified and better recognized (but since data gathering, the scientific method, and competent decision making aren’t exactly hallmarks of public education management, why would it be?).

I don’t think it’s accurate to lay this at the feet of high maintenance parents (yes – they exist–but they’re not exclusive to special ed–you see them for g&t kids, athletes, cheerleaders, etc). You don’t get a lot of anecdotes about the special ed parents who invisibly suffer in silence (not trying to be melodramatic here, but they are invisible, silent, and do suffer) because in many cases you don’t know who they are if their kids aren’t the ones with visible manifestations of extreme physical, cognitive or behavioral disabilities. The problem isn’t the kids or the parents…it’s the incompetence of school bureaucrats who don’t have the common sense to discern when mainstreaming is or isn’t appropriate (I can tell you that many special ed parents aren’t sold on–and are often opposed to–forced mainstreaming when it isn’t appropriate for their child) or don’t provide for the supports needed to make it work, and the (don’t get me started) fed dept. of Ed., who continues to busily and mindlessly promote “inclusion” policies in its typically top-down, ill-thought-through manner. Sorry for the rant. I’m just a mom of a child in special ed just trying to muddle through.

There’s a lot in the special ed system that should be fixed, but special ed parents (who know the system best) are in the least viable position to be able to do it.

With continued appreciation for your work (& the work of the rest of the Gormogons),

[Bob]

‘Puter wrote back to Bob and received the following thoughtful response.

‘Puter – Much agreement here.

– special ed waste: special ed seems to be a magnet for egregious administrative bloat (school, district, state education agency, US ED Office for Civil Rights, US Office of Special Education Programs, USDOJ) with little indication that the mission of their positions is being fulfilled; and can anyone tell how special ed students (as opposed to the aforesaid administrators and “smartboard” vendors) benefited from the $11B in ARRA/IDEA stimulus $ designated for special ed?

– lawyers: I think this is akin to the mess we have with employment law (but worse). You’ve got an often incomprehensible (even to lawyers) thicket of statutes, regulations and case law intended to benefit a protected class, administered by non-lawyers using a combination of misinterpretation and [antonym of common sense]. Litigating to enforce those protected rights is a Pyrrhic victory even in a best-case scenario, but those lawsuits skew policies and practices in ways that ultimately hurt those who were intended to be protected. At least adults have the choice of seeking employment where HR isn’t run by idiots. Kids are stuck. (Disclosure: I’m a lawyer, but not an education or special ed lawyer, and not a litigator)

I see that My Favorite Professor (Mondo) has also chimed in. The issue of limited resources is going to be doubly hard to address (much less resolve) given (1) the fact that resources are, er, limited (only to get worse), and (2) the utter financial innumeracy of school system managers, who as far I can tell really do believe that money grows on trees (in forests owned by the Koch brothers. Sorry – writing from Madison, Wisconsin here).

Thanks for reading, and especially for writing.

[Bob]

Not to be outdone, our long-missing JAB wandered out of the swamp behind her double wide and penned the following in boar’s blood:

Dear Mr. Puter:

Betcha that the heading alone stirred up some rather heated replies, not that there’s anything wrong with that….

I can certainly sympathize with Mrs. Puter’s predicament with the emotionally-disturbed special ed student. High school chemistry classes do contain potentially dangerous items—some things can go BOOM-BOOM, others can be used as weapons should the need arise.

Bonus anecdote for your reading pleasure: in Bubba-the-Larger’s advanced chemistry class last year, a couple of fair damsels had themselves a right proper cat-fight. One grabbed a beaker on applied it to the other’s head. Fortunately for the damsel on the receiving end, nothing caustic was in the beaker at the time. So far as I know, neither damsel was a mainstreamed special ed student, but that didn’t prevent the hair-pullin, nor the beaker-whackin’, nor the shirt-rippin’. [Actual quote: “Mom, you could see their bra’s.”]

In fact, the only mainstreamed special ed student in that particular class was my very own Bubba-the-Larger.

You see, Bubba-the-Larger, is severely dyslexic, and I’m not just talking reverses b’s and d’s. When he started high school, he was reading, without accomodation, at around a 4th grade level. But at the same time, his vocabulary when tested orally, scored at the level of a college freshman. He cannot decode words. It is weird and it is hard to understand.

But with appropriate accomodations (test questions are read aloud to him and he is allowed to dictate responses) and assistive technology (MacBook with GhostReader & SmartPen which WE bought with our own money), he can more than hold his own in a regular classroom. What, you may ask, do I mean by “hold his own”?

He pulled a B in AP World History, and A’s in that advanced chemistry class, in Latin, and in Math, where he also won the regular [read “NOT Special ed”] Math award for his entire grade. So far this year, he is aceing math and Intro to Engineering, and doing A/B work in Latin, AP Biology and AP US History. We could not be more proud.

So pardon me if I take issue with your accusation: “Heck, special ed parents have been screwing your kids for years.

Not only that, but I don’t feel that I am “… driven to extort from the school district as many services as they can for their child.”

However, I am extremely “driven” to make sure that the school provides textbooks in either CD-Rom/DVD or searchable PDF format. No dead-tree texts for Bubba-the-Larger–that’s so 20th century! And I have been “driven” for many years to make sure he was given the chance to prove that he could work at grade level. Has this taken extra effort on the part of the school system and his teachers? Doubtlessly.

But I do concede your point that, “There is a valid purpose for segregating the disruptive or unprepared special ed students….” At Bubba-the Larger’s Anonymous Public High School, special ed students spend one period in the charmingly-named “Study Skills.” For Bubba-the-Larger, it is the worst class of the day because he has to put up with all the disruptive junk that goes on. But he has broken up/prevented more than a few fights, so we kinda figure he’s paid the school system back for the extra effort he has required by saving them some lawsuit money!

Yours from the Doublewide, JAB

These are thoughtful responses, and a good opening to dialogue on a difficult topic: the appropriate methods and funding of special education, with appropriate consideration to its impact on general education. It’s always good to consider the view from the other side of the fence.

‘Puter’s retiring to his sleeping hole for some contemplation. More soon.

'Puter

Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.

’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.

The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.

His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.

He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.

Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.

‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.