KosAbility is a community diary series posted at 5 PM ET every Sunday and Wednesday by volunteer diarists. This is a gathering place for people who are living with disabilities, who love someone with a disability, or who want to know more about the issues surrounding this topic. There are two parts to each diary. First, a volunteer diarist will offer their specific knowledge and insight about a topic they know intimately. Then, readers are invited to comment on what they've read and/or ask general questions about disabilities, share something they've learned, tell bad jokes, post photos, or rage about the unfairness of their situation. Our only rule is to be kind; trolls will be spayed or neutered.
A favorite “cause” of the ALEC crowd and GOP/Tea Party candidates is the dismantling of public education under the guise of parental choice. In a number of GOP/TP-controlled states, experiments are underway with two especially vulnerable groups—low-income students of color, and students with disabilities.
What does “parental choice” mean for students with disabilities? A little bit of history: In 1975 the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EAHCA) required public schools to provide an education for children with physical and mental disabilities who previously were excluded from schools and either denied education altogether or forced into segregated institution-based programs. EAHCA did not require schools to place children in mainstream classes, or to provide instruction in self-contained classes that would permit the children to reach their full potential. For that reason, Congress passed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 1990, the same year that saw the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Both IDEA and ADA demanded the inclusion, with appropriate accommodation, of children and adults with disabilities in schools and workplaces. In the public school context, IDEA and ADA allowed those with physical and mental disabilities to pursue their educational and career goals to the same extent as their non-disabled peers.
I have personally benefitted from IDEA and ADA. Before the passage of these two laws and my own Asperger’s diagnosis, I enrolled in a prestigious graduate school program but after I completed my two years of coursework, no faculty advisor would agree to work with me. I had to drop out because of my inability to understand the “hidden curriculum” and connect with a mentor. Thirty years later, I finally received my master’s degree through a low-residency program with a strong online component, and all the way through received the kind of understanding, support, and encouragement that allowed me to succeed in graduate school.
The ALEC version of parental choice appears on the surface to provide the kind of educational environment from which I benefitted, including an online component. Look beneath, and it represents a move to return to the dark days, when persons with disabilities were hidden away behind the closed doors of private homes and institutions.
Choosing to make vouchers available only to students with disabilities and other high-needs students represents above all, an effort to resegregate those students. As Julie Underwood writes in The Nation, “Most disability organization strongly oppose special education vouchers—and decades of evidence suggests that such students are better off receiving additional support in public schools.”
My own experience bears that out. While interacting with my advisor online took pressure off the kinds of face-to-face interactions that I find difficult to manage over the long term, my interactions with faculty and my fellow students during the short-term residencies were uniformly positive for me and for them. I gained valuable experience interacting with others in a classroom setting, and was able to contribute my technical skills and musical “ear” to DJ the school’s dances and to manage part of an online student forum. Had I been segregated in a school for students with disabilities or isolated in an online-only program, none of these benefits would have occurred.
Leaving aside the lack of accountability of voucher schools and the inadequacy of those vouchers in providing a quality education (of which there is significant evidence in other countries where they’ve been implemented—such as in Chile under the Pinochet dictatorship), the result of these measures will be the wholesale departure of children with disabilities from the public schools and their return to invisibility. Online education may allow learning at one’s own pace, away from the torment of bullies or the possibility of social failure, but it is also incredibly isolating. It does not prepare a person with a disability to go out into the world, and it does not help persons without disabilities to recognize the presence and contributions of those who may look, think, or act differently from them. Segregated classrooms and schools have served as horrific “dumping grounds” in the past, and we can expect that underfunded, unaccountable voucher schools for children with disabilities will become the same thing today and in the future.
Those who advocate vouchers and “parental choice” are a perfect example of wolves in sheep’s clothing. And the label on the clothing shows when we see the move to offer these vouchers first to students with disabilities, for it is not concern for the children that motivates the ALEC and GOP/TP “wolves” but their desire to put children who might demand more money and attention out of sight and out of mind.