11:01 PM CST on Thursday, December 18, 2008
HOUSTON—Dana Pennington’s son, Tyler, is mentally disabled, but he goes to a public school.
Recently, she recorded one of his classes. She was not happy with what she saw.
“If this is speech therapy, I guess this explains why Tyler’s not where he needs to be,” Pennington said. “They’re hurting my son, because they’re just not giving him what he needs.”
Pennington contends that Tyler is getting lackluster instruction in the special education classes at his Spring ISD school.
It’s an issue affecting more and more families, as the number of autistic kids like Tyler continues to skyrocket.
Currently, the CDC says one of every 150 children is affected by autism.
Tyler is one of over 90,000 special ed students in the Houston area. They make up more than 10 percent of the student population. Federal law says they’re entitled to an education, but how good of an education are they getting?
A new report by a Texas Senate committee found that dealing with the special education system is “at best challenging and at worst dysfunctional and adversarial.”
The report indicates that some schools offer good programs, while others don’t. The report says the latter category of schools is doing less than the law requires, hoping parents won’t challenge them.
So many parents need help negotiating with schools that groups like the Family to Family Network have popped up.
Family to Family said they recently had to get the state to intervene to make a Houston public school start offering speech therapy.
Family to Family’s Mary Jane Williams said that school has a speech therapist now.
But HISD said they are not withholding services at all.
They said they try to provide specially-trained teachers, but those teachers are even harder to hire than the regular ones.
“There’s a shortage of speech therapists across the nation. And it’s not just in Houston ISD,” HISD Assistant Superintendent Carolyn Guess said.
HISD said it wants to work with parents, and they’re now providing liaisons for just that purpose.
There are also proposals to let parents like Pennington, who are dissatisfied with the schools, to transfer their kids to whatever school they prefer.
State Rep. Debbie Riddle said she plans to propose a voucher law just for special ed.
“Nobody knows what is best for that child better than the parents,” she said.
For taxpayers, advocates for special ed kids believe it’s a case of pay now or pay later.
“These are kids we’re going to have to take care of later on,” Williams said.
By providing good special ed now, advocates believe mentally disabled children may require less public assistance as adults.
And that could mean a better life, just like any parent would want for their child.
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