Here’s an anecdote in support of ‘Puter’s confrontational statement. ‘Puter knows that the plural of anecdote is not data, but it seems that for some reason, the education establishment doesn’t want to collect data on the phenomenon described below. ‘Puter, in his artless Japanese way, wonders why that is.

The anecdote. Mrs. ‘Puter teaches high school chemistry in a suburban Upstate school district. This year, in one of her honors chemistry classes, a special ed student is being mainstreamed. Put more succinctly, a special ed student is being unceremoniously dumped in Mrs. ‘Puter’s classroom without support. The student is of normal or better intelligence, but has major emotional and psychological issues.

This single student is using approximately one-quarter of Mrs. ‘Puter’s class time, and probably one-third of her after school time. This leaves the remaining 25 non special ed kids far less time with their instructor. Less time on task for the teacher equates to less learning for the students.

Sure, this is but one anecdote, but ‘Puter is certain this represents the current state of affairs in most suburban public schools throughout our fair land. The pressure mainstreamed special ed kids put on general ed teachers, coupled with the impact on the general ed students, is a hidden cost of special ed, and one that is seldom acknowledged. Mostly likely the negative impacts of mainstreaming are minimized are hidden because it is politically incorrect to acknowledge the fact. After all, every child can be a doctor. Just ask the educrat-bureaucrat complex.

Parents of general ed kids don’t see these hidden costs. How could they? How many of you have ever gone and sat in on one of your kid’s chemistry class? You don’t have time, nor should you have to do so. And frankly, your kids aren’t going to tell you they’re getting shorted because of special ed students because, well, they’re dumb-assed teenagers and don’t know better.

Parents wrongly assume that their kids have the teacher’s focused attention for the duration of class. With mainstreaming of disruptive (though in this case well-meaning) kids, general ed kids are being robbed of their education. Unless you are an exceptionally well informed parent, you’ll never know it. Mainstreaming has very real, yet nearly invisible, negative impacts on public education.

PBS says that the purpose of public education is:

1. To prepare children for citizenship
2. To cultivate a skilled workforce
3. To teach cultural literacy
4. To prepare students for college
5. To help students become critical thinkers
6. To help students compete in a global marketplace

Leaving aside the PC horse manure contained in point 3, mainstreaming disruptive special education students in no manner furthers any of the remaining points. If the special ed student is of normal or better intelligence, but disruptive, she prevents the other students from achieving public education’s goal. If the student is well below normal intelligence (retarded, “special needs,” “differently abled” or “intellectually challenged” for our few PC readers), the student’s handlers (usually one or more teachers/aides) are disruptive to the classroom environment. This is simply a fact, regardless of the accommodations provided the special ed student.

General ed parents should fight against mainstreaming as hard as special ed parents fight for it. Simply put, special ed students mainstreamed are harming your child’s education. Your kid has just as much right (if not more) as a special ed kid to a good education. You are not punishing a special ed kid, despite what you will inevitably hear. You are advocating for your child. Heck, special ed parents have been screwing your kids for years. Stand up. Fight back. There is a just balance to be reached here, but right now the field is tilted heavily in favor of special ed.

If you want to know what’s really driving special education, you need to look at two factors: public sector unions and hyper-focused parents. Heck, special ed teachers even have their own special union, dedicated to drive tax expenditures ever higher, with an even whinier battle cry of “exceptional teachers for exceptional children.” And parents of special needs children, understandably, are driven to extort from the school district as many services as they can for their child.

Not a few of these special ed parents hold unreasonable expectations for their children’s progress, and this, along with union demands, drives unreasonable expenditures. If your child’s IQ is 60, he shouldn’t be in chemistry classes. Similarly, if your child has profound behavioral issues but has a 100 IQ, he should not be in chemistry class. There is a valid purpose for segregating the disruptive or unprepared special ed students from the general ed students. It’s not a punishment for your child being “special” or “different,” it’s a recognition of the impact your child has on the general ed students, who are equally deserving of a quality education.

To head off the inevitable sob stories of profoundly retarded children benefited by special education, let ‘Puter preemptively respond thus. If your child is profoundly retarded, they are not receiving education services, they are receiving social services. Indeed, there is an argument to be made that these services are in fact welfare.

Since the purpose of public education (as mentioned above) is to produce functional workers and good citizens, and the profoundly retarded will likely, despite all efforts, never be either, no education dollars should be spent on them.

‘Puter is not calling for a return to the 1960s, where retarded and disruptive kids were either warehoused in suboptimal environments or not served at all. ‘Puter supports services for the profoundly retarded and otherwise disruptive students, but not at the expense of general education, and sure as heck not funded with exceptionally narrow property taxes. Services for these individuals are social services, and ought be funded by a broad-based tax (sales, payroll, income) as all citizens, not simply property owners benefit from them.

You can call ‘Puter a hater all you want, and some of you will. But ad hominem arguments are the stuff of losers. If you’ve got a rational, reasoned response, ‘Puter welcomes you to email him.

'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.