Social Learning: Is This The Responsibility of School Districts?

Rebecca K. Spar
Cole Schotz Docket
Summer 2007
http://www.coleschotz.com/publications-47-141.html

As more and more children are diagnosed with disabling conditions like autism, which often include significant deficiencies in social skills, parents are increasingly insisting that their school districts address their child’s social skill deficiencies. Failing to respond appropriately proved expensive for one California school district. In 2005 the Manhattan Beach Unified School District and the California Department of Education agreed to pay more than $6.7 million to a family, based in part on the district’s failure to provide appropriate social skills instruction and modeling to a fourth grader with autism.

Federal courts in this jurisdiction have consistently recognized that the concept of education is broad and formal education may begin by working on basic social skills. These decisions for the most part, though, involved children with significant cognitive issues who were not attending general classes or expected to master the core content academic curriculum.

School districts have been more reluctant to get involved when the student is bright, receives passing or even honors grades, but has significant social skills deficiencies. As districts see the consequences of the isolation, rejection and even harassment of these students by their peers, there is increasing awareness of how students’ social skill deficiencies impact upon students’ overall emotional and social well-being and educational performance and on the well-being of the school system as a whole. There is also an increasing recognition that all students need flexible thinking, problem solving, teamwork and other social skills abilities if they are to succeed in employment and in their personal future lives.

The First Circuit Court of Appeals recently spoke to this issue in a case involving a bright, well-behaved honors student diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome, a condition on the autism spectrum but where the student typically has strong cognitive skills but very significant social impairments. In this case, the student was withdrawn, could not connect with her peers or her teachers, was inflexible, unable to handle change and misread social cues. Even after the student became so upset that she tried to commit suicide, the school district refused to provide her with any special education services, saying her educational performance was not adversely affected by her social impairment as she received good grades. The District Court and Court of Appeals both disagreed, holding that educational performance can include social skill deficiencies which adversely impact upon the student’s continuing participation in general classes. The courts also held that social-skills and pragmatic instruction could be the special education needed by the student to access the general curriculum.

Social skills services can include direct teaching of social skills individually or in groups, modeling and facilitating social skill development through assigning peer “buddy” or nondisabled peers to attend class or extracurricular activities with the student. It may also include social skills coaching and training of the teaching staff and aides in how to facilitate social skill development. It is up to the child’s Individualized Education Program (IEP) team, including the parents, to decide whether social skills are an area of need and how they should be addressed and to include the appropriate services in the child’s IEP.