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

warm while they are there. Ad hoc help which
places the burden, and the humiliation, on the child
and the child's family is neither a sufficient nor a
humane response.
Because of the scope and the complexity of special
education problems discussed in Chapter 4, The
Exclusion of Children With Special Needs, we have
detailed specific procedures for individual assessment
and placement of children on pp. 111-114. Wherever
possible, we prefer that children remain in regular
classrooms. We recognize, however, that children
with special needs require a broad continuum of
services. Each child should be placed in a setting
where the most educational progress can take place.
Teachers should be given the supports necessary to
meet the needs of these children.
We also strongly urge that the prevailing exclusion
of parents from information and from testing
and placement decisions end. Parental involvement
is crucial toward alleviating misclassification and
toward ensuring continuity of care for special needs
children. We will be discussing specific guidelines
with OCR for ending racial disproportion in special
education placements and proposing seleoted districts
for on-site review.
Specific recommendations for curbing school discipline
problems and exclusions are set forth on pp.
147-150 in Chapter 5. These include adoption and
enforcement of specific guidelines by OCR for the
elimination of present racial disproportions in suspensions
and other disciplinary exclusions, and their
future prevention.
There are, however, some overriding requirements
that must be ful:filled to combat the problem
of school exclusion. Data collection and reporting
requirements must be improved substantially and
enforcement efforts undertaken at the federal and
state levels.
We therefore recommend that:
Federal Government
1. Appropriate committees of the United States
Congress should immediately conduct oversight
hearings on the problem of school exclusion in
America. They should seek to determine the full
extent of the problem and to examine its causal
factors and consequences. Hearings should be conducted
in selected locations so that educators, parents,
children and outside advocates can be heard
throughout the country. Special attention should be
paid to overt attendance barriers, school discipline
policies, and special education classificatory procedures
and programs.
2. HEW's Office for Civil Rights should immediately
(l) adopt guidelines for determining racial discrimination
and correcting racial disproportion in
the use of suspensions; (2) institute on-site compliance
reviews in selected districts demonstrated in
this report to have a substantial disproportion of
minority children suspended; (3) refine and broaden
data collection and reporting requirements of school
discipline policies and practices; and (4) request additional
personnel as may be required to monitor
local district compliance and enforce tederal nondiscrimination
requirements in the use of discipline.
3. HEW's Office for Civil Rights should immediately
(1) adopt guidelines for determining racial
discrimination and correcting racial disproportions
in special education placement; (2) institute on-site
compliance reviews in selected districts demonstrated
in this report to have a substantial disproportion
of minority children placed in. EMR classes;
(3) refine and broaden data collection and reporting
requirements of special education programs; and (4)
request additional personnel as may be required to
monitor local district compliance and enforce federal
non-discrimination requirements.
4. The Secretary of HEW should immediately
establish and enforce broad and detailed reporting requirements
for HEW-funded programs in order to
insure that children who are the intended beneficiaries
are neither omitted nor misserved. HEW
data collection requirements should be an integral
part of the normal departmental operations and an
essential adjunct to program approval, funding, accounting,
and evaluation. Every division responsible
for a particular program should be able to state the
numbers of children in need of service, those served,
and the type of programs serving them. In cooperation
with State Departments of Education, HEW
should provide the coordination and technical help
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