The vast majority of kids schools classify as having disabilities are in one of the many “mild” categories. Yet the unmanipulated data – which one must ferret out on one’s own from USDOE’s tables – shows that only about 50% of all kids with disabilities ever graduate high school with any cognizable credential whatsoever – including “certificates” for severely disabled kids which show only that they’ve met some non-academic goals in their education plans?

The private placements and tutoring services such parents seek are typically meaningfully research-validated as effective for their kids’ specific, professionally-diagnosed disabilities. I have yet to see a school district produce similar objective documentation for the claimed efficacy of its special ed. programs or services.

When it comes to very severe disabilities such as autism, the choice is often clear. The private special ed. schools parents seek tend to offer rigorous research-based programs which hold the promise of producing kids who may stand a chance of independent life after school. Public school programs for the very same kid simply do not. Period. This data is clear, unequivocal … and pundit-ignored.

When it comes to the “lighter” disabilities such as professionally-diagnosed dyslexia, the stark disparities in outcomes for the kids are of the same magnitude. Many of the private special ed. schools provide rigorous remediation by staff thoroughly trained in one of the remedial programs based on Orton-Gillingham. Public school districts rarely offer anything in the same ballpark … and their dyslexic kids are not successfully remediated and drop out in large, significant numbers and proportions. Lives totally wasted!

The federal special ed. law – the IDEA – offers one of the few venues for any parents to legitimately hold schools accountable for their failures, by providing that the parents can force the schools to pay for non-school programs and services. The system for adjudicating these disputes is heavily-stacked in the districts’ favor since state ed. depts. – not known for setting up districts to lose money at parental demand – run these hearings and the hearing officers are often district officials’ cronies from the next county over.

Finally, as the wave of kid with autism has hit the public schools, under-trained, under-knowledged staff have been found in significant numbers to do what under-trained, under-knowledged staff did to severely disabled children and adults in institutions such as Willowbrook. Tales of sheer, shocking physical abuse are rife these days, to the point that the House Education Subcommittee held a hearing specifically on this point in May 2009. Media reports of teachers being prosecuted for gross criminal abuse of profoundly disabled children proliferate. The GAO reported that a number of teachers who had actually abusively killed disabled children were still fully-certified and teaching – or abusing – other disabled children.

The Justice Dept.’s Civil Rights Div. just slammed NYS for abuse of children in juvenile facilities, including severe abuse of those who are documentably extremely mentally ill. Ironically, exactly the same things the Civil Rights Div. slammed in these juvie jail placements are now commonplace in many publicly-operated schools and it is alarmingly common to hear of disabled children suffering terrible physical injuries as a result.

What one hears a lot of these days is parents demanding IDEA hearings to get private school placements for their severely disabled kids simply “to keep them safe,” after learning of horrific school abuse from others which their children could not tell them about.

The pundits who cite a few wealthy parents in Scarsdale fighting to have their kids classified as “learning disabled” so they can get extra time on the SAT exams are taking cheap shots at the vast majority of parents of kids who have legitimate, professionally-diagnosed disabilities and who just want their kids to be given the opportunity to grow up as independent members of the community. The objective numbers for the public school special education industry indicate clearly that public schools do not actually equip these kids to do so. That’s what most of these parents are fighting for.

What the pundits never concede, or admit, is that if the public schools are allowed to retain their monopoly on special education programs and services, and legitimate accountability is lessened or eliminated, the public schools will never be forced to improve what they do. Meanwhile, the kids’ parents will keep on being responsible for their kids, often well into adulthood, and ultimately, society will pay for the public schools’ failures, one way or the other, after the kids stop their schooling and turn out not to be able to suport themselves or participate in civic life.