June 29, 2019, Albuquerque (NM) Journal: (OP ED) Special ed needs action, not study https://www.abqjournal.com/1334583/special-ed-needs-action-not-study-ex-nmped-should-prioritize-solutions-for-the-problems.html … Last (month), the New Mexico Public Education Department, in presentation to (the Legislative Education Study Committee), claimed that special education across the state of New Mexico was a priority. The state’s plan is to take a “deep dive” consisting of a yearlong audit – for which NMPED has apparently not yet developed any specific goals or tasks. A plan to address special education issues in New Mexico consisting of gathering information for a year is simply a decoy. NMPED currently has knowledge about significant dysfunction in the delivery of special education to our students with disabilities across the state. Each year, NMPED receives dozens of state complaints and due process hearing requests by parents and organizations identifying issues of non-compliance with federal law and school districts’ failure to provide appropriate special education. NMPED leadership should simply sit down, analyze the repeated fact patterns in these complaints and prioritize solutions for the lists of problems found there. Here’s what one top 10 issue list might look like: 1. Children with autism are not provided education consistent with evidence-based practices; 2. Children with disabilities are routinely restrained and secluded contrary to state law; 3. School districts are not providing research-based reading instruction to students who have reading disabilities, including dyslexia; 4. Parents and staff who advocate for children with disabilities are retaliated against; 5. Students with disabilities are placed in segregated “special” education classes and taught all year by substitutes or staff with no specialized training; 6. Schools threaten their own staff to not report problems to parents of children with disabilities; 7. Many of our best special education staff leave every year because of lack of support for their important work and due to a toxic environment created by administrators; 8. Children who have nonconforming behaviors as result of disability and inadequate education are punished, excluded and charged with crimes; 9. Schools routinely call parents to remove their children from school or to come to the school and provide support; and 10. No meaningful, ready technical assistance and consultation exists for special educators charged with meeting students’ complex educational needs. It is nonsensical for NMPED to delay action. The hard work is creating solutions, not “finding” issues.
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Childhood Lost
Children today are noticeably different from previous generations, and the proof is in the news coverage we see every day. This site shows you what’s happening in schools around the world. Children are increasingly disabled and chronically ill, and the education system has to accommodate them. Things we've long associated with autism, like sensory issues, repetitive behaviors, anxiety and lack of social skills, are now problems affecting mainstream students. Blame is predictably placed on bad parenting (otherwise known as trauma from home).
Addressing mental health needs is as important as academics for modern educators. This is an unrecognized disaster. The stories here are about children who can’t learn or behave like children have always been expected to. What childhood has become is a chilling portent for the future of mankind.
Anne Dachel, Media editor, Age of Autism
http://www.ageofautism.com/media/
(John Dachel, Tech. assist.)
What will happen in another 4 years? How can we go on like this? This is a national (and international) problem of monumental proportions. We have an entire new class of children who cannot be accommodated by the system: many are manifestly neurologically impaired. Meanwhile, the government and the medical profession sleep on regardless.
John Stone,
UK media editor, Age of Autism
The generation of American children born after 1990 are arguably the sickest generation in the history of our country.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
It seemed to me that with rising autism prevalence, you’d also see rising autism costs to society, and it turns out, the costs are catastrophic.
They calculated that in 2015 autism cost the United States $268 billion and they projected that if autism continues at its current rate, we’re looking at one trillion dollars a year in autism costs by 2025, so within five years.
Toby Rogers, PhD, Political economist
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