Give Every Child A Choice

Yet another example of why the bone-headed, dumbed down, "best practices" one-size-fits-all approach to education pushed by the teachers' union doesn't work, enshrining mediocrity and worse. WSJ front page story on parents of disabled children pushing for separate classes:

Last fall, groups who favor placing disabled students in regular classrooms faced opposition from an unlikely quarter: parents like Norette Travis, whose daughter Valerie has autism.

Valerie had already tried the mainstreaming approach that the disability-advocacy groups were supporting. After attending a preschool program for special-needs students, she was assigned to a regular kindergarten class. But there, her mother says, she disrupted class, ran through the hallways and lashed out at others -- at one point giving a teacher a black eye.

"She did not learn anything that year," Ms. Travis recalls. "She regressed."

Over the last generation, special needs children have been pushed into "mainstream" classes as a way to hide the costs of the program and also persuade parents that with the addition of an aide in the classroom their child's special needs can be met. (At the same time, while continuously raising teachers' salaries, special needs programs are the only budgets school boards ever seem to want to cut.) Mainstream parents are told this is a way to essentially lower class size by adding an extra adult, and the implication as well is that a special needs child adds "diversity" to the classroom, just another feel good statistic that ignores the individual. Meanwhile, gifted children are left to teach themselves or pressed into service to teach others in endless group projects.

Yes, schools can be overburdened. But calling separate schools for special needs students "segregated" is wrong-headed. The real analogy are schools as penal institutions, with children under lockdown and too little learning going on, while good teachers are held back and mediocre ones kept on. And a true appreciation of civil rights would appreciate the individual rights of these children.

This is the civil rights challenge of our time.

One way to deliver learning tailored to each child, while keeping costs to taxpayers under control, is to allow more school choice. Competition will raise the quality of teachers, increase accountability to parents, and check costs, as parents shop for the best program for their child, whatever their abilities.

Every child needs a challenge. Give every child a choice.

Related posts: Education Revolution, The Education Solution