Confronting Inequities in Special Education

By Carolina Rosa / Winter 2020

The State of the Union speech of 1944, better known as the Second Bill of Rights, presented a set of rights that should be guaranteed to all if we expect to prosper as a nation. Among these rights is “the right to a good education” (Roosevelt 98). Yet nearly eighty years after, there is still progress to be made for the education system to truly be considered equally good for all students. One of the groups that are particularly affected by the shortcomings of public education are students with disabilities. Although I have not been directly affected by the special education system, I learned and continue to learn from my brother who had to navigate this system for nearly a decade. There have been many significant changes in the last decades when it comes to the topic of disabilities. Nowadays, these topics are less taboo, allowing people to not only become more informed about them but also more accepting. However, there is still room for improvement, especially when it comes to how disabilities are handled in American public schools. Every student deserves an equal opportunity to succeed. Yet special education to this day faces obstacles that stand in the way of this being a reality for all students.

As I have mentioned, much of my experience with the public education system as it relates to students with disabilities, comes from being the sister of a student directly impacted by it. My family’s history with special education began around 2009, when my then three-year-old brother was first diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). At the time, my family and I lived in Minas Gerais, Brazil, and even though therapy and special education programs did exist, they were not accessible for low and middle-class families. Therefore, many people seek better living conditions for themselves and their loved ones abroad. This, among other reasons, was why my family moved to the U.S. in 2011. For the past nine years, my family has engaged with several public schools, getting to know others who also had to navigate this system. In high school, I became a volunteer at a therapy center for people with special needs, where I met others who had a similar experience with public special education, either as students, caretakers, or educators. From our own experience and by interacting with others, I began to see that while some schools provide proper and consistent assistance, others lack resources to maintain the necessary educational programs.

My own family’s experience and that of people I have met are only the surface of the problem, it is necessary to dig deeper within America’s history of special education to understand how it is handled today. Some of these issues can be traced back to the country’s early years. At the time, people with disabilities were placed at the very bottom of the social hierarchy and kept away from society in confining institutions, such as asylums (Twohig slide 43). The process of reintegration of people with disabilities into the public sphere, including into schools, has come a long way. Prior to 1975, children and teenagers with disabilities were either not in school or enrolled in regular-paced classes without assistance, which led many to eventually drop out (Mckenna, “Is the Bar Too Low for Special Education?”). That year, a law that would become the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) was passed. Under this law, parents or teachers can ask students to be evaluated for any disability that affects their learning. If additional services are necessary for learning, an Individual Education Plan (IEP) to address the specific needs of the students is developed by the district administrators in conjunction with the student’s parents and educator(s) (Legislative Analyst’s Office). This established the foundations of public education for people with disabilities, although further progress continues to face obstacles.

IDEA was a step in the right direction, but the right it secured was still too open for ableist interpretations. That is, the loopholes in the original law, allowed for some schools to excuse maintaining a system that held lower standards for students with disabilities than other students. This was the case in 2012, when the parents of a student sued their school district for not offering effective treatment in their public schools. It was argued that IDEA never specified the quality of the special education it guaranteed, therefore, the district could not be held accountable for not meeting the standards it never established in the first place (Mckenna, “Is the Bar Too Low for Special Education?”). It was not until 2017 that the Supreme Court ruled that standards for special education should rise so that the program offered to the students will provide them with “challenging objectives'' (Mckenna, “How a New Supreme Court Ruling Could Affect Special Education”). Ideally, this ruling would guarantee that all students should receive a quality education with the assistance they need to reach their full potential. But this is not the case yet.

Despite the legal changes that have set better standards for special education, and the efforts that teachers make to provide students with the materials they need to succeed, what can be done is still limited by the funding that is allocated to these programs. When IDEA was ratified, the federal government established a goal to cover 40% of the states’ cost of special education, with additional costs left to the state and district (National Center for Learning Disabilities). Yet this goal was never reached. The federal government funds on average less than 15%, putting more pressure on the state and especially the districts to handle the additional costs, such as by taking from other academic programs (National Center for Learning Disabilities). The need for a reform of the education system is becoming increasingly more urgent since the number of students in special education continues to rise. In 2018, there were approximately seven million students that qualified for these services, adding to about 14% of the total number of students (National Center for Education Statistics). These are seven million students that highly depend on their own district’s ability to afford the resources they need, meaning that the quality of special education resources that students across the country have access to are not equal.

The differences between districts are apparent even within a single state. Two years ago, my family moved to southern California and the search for schools began again. At first, my brother was placed in a regular-paced classroom without assistance, instead of spending a portion of the day in a special day classroom and another in the mainstream class, like he was used to in our former district. When my mother brought up her concern, the school offered two options: stay in the regular-paced classroom without an aide or switch into a special education classroom full time, where the curriculum did not meet him where he was in terms of reading, writing, and math, and there were fewer opportunities to socialize with the other students in the school. My brother was not comfortable with either because he struggled to keep up with the fast pace of one classroom and felt that he was not learning much in the other, where he was also not able to spend time with the friends he had already met. Similarly, a common complaint from my brother’s former classmates from Northern California and their guardians is that the special education assistance has not remained consistent as they moved from middle to high school.

My family’s experience with public schools pushed us to look for alternatives. Due to the long waitlists of our local nonpublic schools, my parents and I agreed to split the responsibilities of homeschooling until my brother could return to school. After a semester, he was finally enrolled in a small charter school that provides more individualized assistance within a mainstream class. The school has been extremely helpful, and he is doing well. However, these services should not be this difficult to obtain. Instead of spending months or even years in the waiting list of a charter or private school, or having families juggle homeschooling with work responsibilities, ideally all students should be able to get the assistance they need in their local public schools.

The focus away from public institutions is not unique to education, instead it stems from the neoliberal economic system that encourages the privatization of once public resources. Under a neoliberal system, education functions like a business, in which profit (or grades in this case) are the ultimate measure of success (Nickell; Sardoč & Giroux). Government education programs based on standardized testing punish or reward schools, and consequently students, based on exam scores. Although this is theoretically supposed to encourage schools to maintain standards, it can negatively impact schools and their students. This is especially true for schools with a higher population of students with disabilities, who often score less on standardized exams (Nickell). As mentioned by Henry Giroux, this method ignores any form of knowledge “…that cannot be captured by numbers...” (Sardoč & Giroux) so it fails to acknowledge each student’s individual progress. Yet, a low test average still brings down the school’s rating. This inaccurate method of labelling schools and students as failures, allows private companies to take advantage of the situation and establish their own alternative charter schools that would supposedly offer better education, or at least better scores on standardized tests (Nickell). These charter schools might have their own special education department, but it can still be difficult for students to have access to it because of academic screening based on grades (according to Nickell), or like I have personally witnessed, inconvenient locations and long waitlists. The attention my brother has received in his current school is immensely appreciated, but the privatization of education is not the best answer to the faults of the current public special education system. Privatization of resources that should be public creates a gap between students that are able to access private resources and those who are not, instead of working to improve public schools.

The problems that I have mentioned so far, do not only affect students with disabilities and their families, but all students. One of the chief arguments against efforts to increase funding for special education programs is that doing so would put too much strain on the already tight budget of public schools and might lower the standards of education for other students (Mckenna, “How a New Supreme Court Ruling Could Affect Special Education”). It is unfair to value the education of some students over that of others, but the argument is not completely baseless. Maintaining quality special education is expensive. For example, on average, it costs almost three times as much to support a student that receives special education in California than one that doesn't (Legislative Analyst’s Office) and as previously mentioned, the underfunded districts often end up having to make cuts to other programs to fund special education. As stated by Henry Giroux, the neoliberal ideology that dominates many aspects of American society, including education, promotes “self-interest”, “rabid individualism” and a “...survival of the fittest mode of behavior” (Sardoč & Giroux), putting people against each other. But every student deserves the opportunity to learn and for some students, additional support is necessary for this to be possible. Maintaining a system that forces students to pull from each other’s education to benefit their own, ultimately harms everyone.

Before we discuss how we can take action to demand greater federal funding of education or stop the privatization of public resources, we must first reevaluate our ideologies. We must reflect on how we, as members of a society dominated by “self-interest” (as Giroux puts it), think about each other. In the essay “The World House”, Martin Luther King Jr. argues that our own wellbeing is dependent on that of others so “…we cannot preserve self without being concerned about preserving self-others” (248). Therefore, the first step to start fixing the faults of American public education, and other systems of our society that are beyond this essay, is to view ourselves less as competitors and more as interdependent members of a community that can work together for each other’s welfare.

Change can start from inside the schools themselves by encouraging students who are in special education classrooms and those who are not, to participate in activities together. I believe this would create a greater bond between students that otherwise might not have the opportunity to interact very often because of the separate classrooms. Therefore, cultivating a sense of solidarity. In this way, children, already from an early age, will be able to recognize that the needs of others should also concern them. Meanwhile, we should also maintain ourselves informed of the current state of education and use our power as voters to make a difference. As I have mentioned before, special education needs more federal funding and the privatization of public education should not be encouraged. But to achieve these goals, the issues need more public awareness and a greater willingness to join the cause from all members of society. Whether they or a loved one is directly affected by this system, or not.

Once we acknowledge that our contribution is necessary, we can start to look at more concrete solutions. There are important discussions about special education taking place right now that we can participate in. For example, in March of 2019, the IDEA Full Funding Act was proposed to Congress. This legislation would guarantee the 40% funding for special education programs, which would remove the pressure from state and local governments (“Rep. Huffman Introduces Bipartisan, Bicameral Legislation”). By contacting our representatives to urge them to support bills like these, as well as voting for politicians that support better funding of education and less privatization of academic resources, we can work for the betterment of the education system.

Through my family’s story, I hope to spread awareness about the challenges of the special education system and how they shine a light on the weaknesses of the American public education as a whole. The rights of people with disabilities, including access to a more supportive academic environment, has undergone many positive changes throughout the years. But as I have sought to show, it is far from perfect. These programs are in dire need of more federal funding and would benefit from a greater focus on public education rather than private institutions that generate inequality. Yet, the demand for change cannot fall solely on the shoulders of the people who are most affected by special education, like students, their caregivers, and educators. Alone our voices will not be enough to make progress. As members of an interdependent community it is our responsibility to act in favor of a better and more equal education system for everyone. It is vital that everyone takes the initiative to maintain themselves informed, inform others, and join the cause.

Works Cited

King, Martin Luther. “The World House.” WCWP 100: Systemic Analysis For Everyday Life, edited by Niall Twohig, UC San Diego, 2020, pp. 241–254.

Legislative Analyst's Office. “Overview of Special Education in California.” Legislative Analyst's Office, 6 Nov. 2019.

McKenna, Laura. “How a New Supreme Court Ruling Could Affect Special Education.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 23 Mar. 2017.

McKenna, Laura. “Is the Bar Too Low for Special Education?” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 24 Jan. 2017.

National Center for Education Statistics. “Children and Youth with Disabilities.” National Center for Education Statistics, United States Department of Education, May 2019.

National Center for Learning Disabilities. “IDEA Full Funding: Why Should Congress Invest in Special Education?” National Center for Learning Disabilities, 2019.

Nickell, Lauren. “Fighting for Special Education.” Jacobin, 4 Oct. 2017.

“Rep. Huffman Introduces Bipartisan, Bicameral Legislation to Fully Fund Special Education.” Jared Huffman, 26 Mar. 2019.

Roosevelt, Franklin D. “State of the Union 1944 (The Second Bill of Rights).” WCWP 100: Systemic Analysis for Everyday Life, edited by Niall Twohig, UC San Diego, 2020, pp. 91–99.

Sardoč, Mitja, and Henry Giroux. “The Language of Neoliberal Education.” CounterPunch.org, 25 Dec. 2018.

Twohig, Niall. “New Social Hierarchy”. University of California - San Diego. La Jolla. 14 January 2020. Lecture