Watchdog Sounds Alarm Bell on Special Education: Billions Wasted on Identifying, Labeling Illiterate Children as ‘Mentally Disordered’
U.S.Newswire, 7/18/2002 09:35
To: National Desk, Education Reporter
Contact: Marla Filidei of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights,
800-869-2247
WASHINGTON, July 18 /U.S. Newswire/ — The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), a mental health watchdog, says contradictory findings in the President’s Commission on Excellence in Special Education report should raise public alarm. While the report states that 40 percent of children in Special Education (approximately 2.4 million) have been unjustly labeled with learning disorders, it also recommends more of the same ”learning” and ”behavioral” identification procedures that contributed to this crisis.
Bruce Wiseman, the U.S. president of CCHR, says, ”Clearly the ‘identification’ process is the problem because of the subjectivity of the term ‘learning disabled.’ When over two million children are unjustly placed in Special Education simply because they haven’t been taught to read, it is time to redefine the term ‘disability.’
With so much controversy over the funding of Special Education, Congress should also address the fact that ‘mislabeling’ and stigmatizing children just cost state and federal governments nearly $20 billion.”
Former Colorado State School Board Member, Patty Johnson, adds, ”The question that Congress must ask is why have so many states had to introduce resolutions or pass legislation to curb schools labeling and drugging children? Unfortunately, the answer is that until IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act) is reformed, and Congress provides a physically based scientific definition of ‘disability,’ the diagnosing of children with subjective disorders will continue to be a national problem.”
Johnson’s precedent-setting school board resolution in 1999 — in the wake of the Columbine school shooting spree — demanded academic rather than drug solutions for behavioral and learning problems in the classroom. For her, the President’s Commission’s report recommending that children be taught to read is vindicating.
”The diagnosing of children with so-called mental disorders is not the role of school personnel, nor is recommending the use of psychiatric drugs,” said Johnson, ”The (Colorado) resolution told educators that their role was to teach and to pursue academic and disciplinary solutions for problems of attention and learning.”
The resolution was sparked by both the identifying and labeling of schoolchildren with learning ”disorders,” such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and the fact that disciplinary problems in students were being dealt with by psychological programs and psychotropic drugs. Both of the teen shooters in the Columbine massacre had undergone ”anger management” programs, while Eric Harris was also taking a prescribed psychiatric drug, now off the market.
The problem with trying to identify ADHD or ”Learning Disorders” is that there are no scientific criteria to determine them in any child. The World Institute of Disability says that a clear definition of how to measure or assess ”LD” has not been achieved.
Kevin P. Dwyer, assistant executive director at the National Association of School Psychologists, candidly admitted, ”We’re not sophisticated enough to do a perfect diagnosis.”
Pediatric neurologist Fred Baughman, Jr. states, ”There must be an objective, scientifically based definition of ‘disability,’ so we are not needlessly labeling and drugging millions of American schoolchildren who should never have been categorized as ‘disabled’ in the first place.”
According to CCHR’s more than 30-year investigation, a huge and entrenched psychiatric treatment empire has mushroomed around such fictitious diseases as ”Learning Disorder” and ADHD-a disorder literally voted into existence by a show of American Psychiatric Association (APA) Committee hands. That empire — unwittingly funded through Special Education — demands and consumes billions of dollars each year, has turned schools into mental health clinics, and mentally and physically hooked millions of normal children on mind-altering drugs, when they simply needed to be taught to read. The system continues to be abused because of a general lack of accountability. ”It may seem unbelievable,” says Wiseman, ”But it also happens to be true.”
We share a different philosophy on this one
I believe that memorizing some words (high-frequency, non-phonetic) as whole words is a necessary reality because they just don’t fit into phonetic instruction and occur with such frequency that the student struggles without them.
How you teach them—drill or in-context or both—is different yet and may vary student-by-student, depending on how they best remember semantic information.
I do, however, respect your right to disagree.
Re: We share a different philosophy on this one
When the child understands that you can sound out all of the words, in a short amount of time, these words are put in long term memory. When you think of it, there is a huge amount of time spent on sight words, it would be better time spent on just teaching the child how to read. Remember, reading is brain based and the more that the brain sees the combinations that represents a sound (basic and advanced code) , the more imprinting is made on the brain. Comprehension depends on being able to segment and blend sounds. The more you do it the better it gets. This doesn’t happen memorizing sight words.
Re: might sound like a soapbox, but just thinking
Leah,
I am to the point that I would be relieved if ADD was part of the picture because then maybe I can do something to change things. I know that a big part of my son’s problems have to do with the way his brain integrates information—he has inefficient connections and he wears out easily. We have been doing Neuronet for some time now, which has helped, and are now doing a new exercise (that the therapist just started doing) that seems to be addressing this. This may be what is behind a lot of his inattention. On the other hand, he has a lot of the organizational issues and other behaviors that go along with ADD too, although I do notice they are much improved after IM. So maybe between the NN we are doing now and the IM, drugs won’t be necessary. But I just want things to be easier for my son. We have been working very hard with him for over two years now and I am still dreading the coming year. I never thought that it would be this difficult. I will do a trial of medication if the neurologist recommends it, although I think I would wait until school was on for a month so we had a good baseline comparison.
I used to think ADD was the fad of the week and would never consider medicating my child. I can’t believe now how self righteous I was when we learned that he had CAPD—and that somehow then I thought it was better to have than ADD. I don’t think his ADD is severe, if that is what it is,–I actually see some of the same behaviors in my husband who has managed to get a Phd. But my husband does not have any learning disabilities. I think that is where for some of our kids the problem lies–it is the combination of problems that is deadly.
I am delighted to know how much difference medication has made for your daughter who has multiple problems as well. I am happy for her but also hopeful for my son.
Beth
Re: what have you tried that hasn't worked?
I think you are right about the cir. but also that many kids just failed. My best friend from college’s brother only graduated from high school because his aunt was a big donar to the school. Since then he has led a life of failure—drugs ect. It is clear to everyone in the family now (because of his nephews) that he was ADHD and probably Ld as well. All his nephews (but interstingly not the nieces) are ADHD or ADD. Two of the three are LD as well. One of my friends kids was diagnosed as LD in first grade and ADD in third. Once he was medicated he was able to compenstate for his LD and he has done well in regular classes with no extra help. In contrast, his brother who was identified as LD in fifth grade still struggled all the way through school. My friend says she realizes now that he was ADD as well—unlike his brother he was not hyperactive and didn’t attract attention.
I also think that modern life has made ADHD, as well as learning disabilities, more problematic. My son loves plants and the outdoors. In the pioneer days, he would never attended school. He would have never learned to read. He could have been a successful farmer who depended upon a wife to handle anything with reading. Even a generation ago, the literacy demands were much lower.
Beth
Re: new article for discussion - what do you think?
You are right—if you can’t do something than you won’t pay attention. Just take me to a class on physics and I will demonstrate. I agree—let’s teach reading right and see what happens. But let’s also admit that some kids have been taught right and still can’t read well. My son is one of those. I don’t know if ADD is playing into the picture with him—something is. Certainly he is nattentive—but is the inattention causing him to not retain the reading instruction or is something else causing his difficulties with reading which then makes him inattentive.
Beth
Re: might sound like a soapbox, but just thinking
I honestly believe that ADD and LD are on a continuum. Everyone has a little problem with attention now and then, everyone has trouble learning certain things.
I think modern life has moved the continuum so that those with a lesser problem with attention are identified ADD and medicated.
Haven’t we all said to our husbands, “Are you listening to me.” My husbands problem with attention is specifically related to conversations about my wacky relatives.
My son is definitely borderline ADD. I hope to do enough other things that medication is not needed. I don’t know what will happen when he gets to the older grades and the demands are greater. This environment may move the continuum to put him in the ADD category or we may be able to stimulate the area of the brain that has the weak connections enough so that it is not neccessary.
I hope he never needs meds and am working diligently toward that goal.
Re: could you give description of whole language?
If you look under LD in Depth, then Reading, you’ll find an article called Whole Language Lives. I found it a REAL eyeopener.
We are talking about 50, or so...
With my LiPS and OG, I am not an exclusive whole language proponent. I do, however, see reason to teach a very limited number of sight words and my LiPS and OG reading mentors would agree.
With all respect, I do disagree with you—one cannot “sound out *all* words. One can sound out the very vast majority—but not all. High-frequency words like “why” can be taught in a pattern and subsequently sounded out…they don’t need to be taught as sight words. Others, like “of” or “where” are not phonetically accurate and occur often. It helps to just memorize them.
I am very interested in brain research. Have spent some time reading Pat Wolfe, Eric Jensen, Marian Diamond, and the Kanes, I become more & more interested in learning patterns. (Yes, I’m a pattern seeker myself!) I am very structured in how I show patterns to students. I understand that brain needs patterns to memorize easily. There are, however, a few situations for which that this just doesn’t work.
I am not advocating filling ones walls with sight words nor abandoning explicit, direct instruction for the sake of sight word flash cards. Reading instruction requires multiple directions in order to reach every student. It is dynamic and fluid.
Re: We are talking about 50, or so...
I don’t really see any disagreement here. My son relishes the power of sounding out words. He couldn’t for so long and yet he’s memorizing wordslike of , you, the with sight cards. When reading he will try to sound it out even when he recgonizes it as if he’s testing the rules to see how they really do work, bu t then he’ll say sight word and say it.
When you drill children on sight words it gives them a mixed message. You are saying that whole words are to be memorized not sounded out.
I agree that some words do not fit the code but there are very few the way phonographix is taught.
Even these few sight words have to be carefully taught in the context of the writing not as a list to be memorized.
At my school they used a list of sight words that were the most common words most of which could be decoded. That mixed message was confusing and led to his guessing smaller words while reading text. This is a problem I continue to help him resolve.
I have to teach him and I have to unteach him.