children out of school in america - University of Tennessee Digital ...

•
gomery, Alabama did not set up learning disabilities
classes until recently. There is a good selection of
teachers for programs for the mentally retarded, but
learning disability teachers are scarcer than "hen's
teeth. "46
Misclassification
For children with special needs to be in poor programs
is educationally unsound; for them to be in
the wrong programs is harmful and cruel. Children
with one problem who are put in classes geared for
a different problem may not learn, may fall further
behind and experience great frustration. Those who
are "normal" like B.J. and his New Bedford friends
described in Chapter I, who have been misdiagnosed
or misplaced for racially discriminatory or for other
reasons, suffer grave doubts about their own abilities
and may lose all motivation to go to school at
all. The damage to their intellectual and emotional
development may be great. As Judge J. Skelly
Wright wrote in his decision in Hobson v. Hansen
about students who had been misclassified:
The unfortunate students, treated as if they were
subnormal, come to accept the fact that they are
subnormal.4 7
Despite these foreseeable harmful consequences,
misclassification in schools is rife. The most striking
data we turned up point to racial discrimination in
the classification process. But we also discovered
three other major causes of error in placing children
in special education.
First, assessment techniques are inadequate. They
often cannot pinpoint the cause of symptoms. They
are costly and facilities and trained personnel may
be in short supply. Less expensive, standardized
tests are crude measures of overall performance and
may be biased against culturally or linguistically different
children.
Second, children are often placed on the basis of
subjective evaluation. Special education classes may
be misused by classroom teachers to remove children
who are disruptive, who do not have a handicap,
and who will not benefit from special educational
47 269 F.Supp. 401, 484 (D.D.C. 1967), af}'d. ell ballc
sub 110m. Smuck v. Hobson, 408 F.2d 175 (D.C. Cir.
1969).
instruction. If a teachei: does not deliberately banish
trouble-makers to special education classes, he or
she may evaluate such students subjectively and
decide they belong there because of their behavior.
Whether willful or unwitting, misclassification commonly
occurs.
Third, many financial aid programs provide additional
funds for serving children with special needs.
The incentive of increased revenues sometimes
tempts school and other officials to be careless about
identification, labeling and segregation of students
into special education classes. Rather than seeking
children with unmet needs who may be difficult to
find, the temptation to label those at hand is appealing.
Each of these problems in the classification of
children is abetted by the virtual monopoly school
officials exercise in making these critical decisions.
Even more than the suspension process which we
discuss in Chapter 5, classification procedures, or
the lack of them, are hidden from public and parental
view.
Racial Discrimination in Classification
-Janice, 16, is in the 10th grade in Macon, Georgia.
She has been suspended several times for refusing
to be placed in a special education class. The
root of this problem extends back to September
1972 when Janice says she was told by her white
advisor that she should be placed in special math
and English classes because of her "attitude."
Janice refused on grounds that these classes are
for "dumb people." Since September, she has been
suspended on an average of once every three
months for refusing to be placed in these classes.
However, she has continued to return to school
in her regular classes and maintains a C average.
Janice feels she needs tutoring in math and English
but does not need to be placed in a special
education class. If she is forced into such a class,
she will drop out. She would be ostracized by
her friends who would tease her about being in a
class with a "bunch of dummies. Teachers in
these classes don't teach, they just try to keep the
dummies quiet."
The threat of being placed in this class has
caused Janice to "study harder in order to show
the white folks that she is not dumb." Thus far,
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