Newsgroups: bit.listserv.deaf-l
Date:         Sat, 21 Nov 1992 05:01:53 -0500
From:         Seth Gordon <sethg@SILVER.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Subject:      Re: I guess it depends on one's parents!
              17 Nov 1992 09:39:16 EST <9211171540.AA08196@silver.lcs.mit.edu>

Esther's post reminds me of the following story, which still makes
my blood boil, and has nothing to do with the oral-vs-sign debate.

There's an upper-class suburb of Boston called Westford, and their
high school is called Westford Academy.  You'd think that this Academy
has enough of a budget to supply a decent special-ed program.  No
such luck.

A friend of mine, who I'll call "Anne", is both gifted and
learning-disabled.  She's now in the honors program at Michigan State
University.  If she had received specialized help in assessing and
dealing with her learning disability, she might have been able to
qualify for a better college (she was hoping to get into MIT), but
at Westford Academy, special-ed students must take *all* their classes
in the school resource room--i.e., if she had revealed her learning
disability to the school administration, they would not have let her
take physics, calculus, and other high-level classes.

As soon as Anne told me this, I literally shouted "LEAST RESTRICTIVE
ENVIRONMENT!  LEAST RESTRICTIVE ENVIRONMENT!  A FREE, APPROPRIATE, AND
PUBLIC EDUCATION IN THE LEAST RESTRICTIVE ENVIRONMENT!"  I was quoting
the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which Congress
specifically passed in order to *outlaw* that kind of segregation.
And the special-ed law in Massachusetts, Chapter 766, is even
stricter: it requires that all special-ed students get the "maximum
feasible benefit" from their programs.  In a word, the Westford policy
is ILLEGAL.  Imagine me making the sign "illegal" with such force that
there'll be red splotches on my hands for the next week.

So, I told Anne, get a lawyer, you have the right to string these
bureaucrats up by their toes.  She couldn't, she said, because her
parents refused to believe that *anything* could be wrong with their
sweet darling perfect daughter.

Then she told me about her friend, who I'll call Betty.  Betty has
progressive hearing loss; she is now hard of hearing.  I don't know
her audiolgical statistics, but Betty can converse orally in a social
setting without hearing aids, which is a damn good thing, because
she can't afford aids and hardly knows any sign language.

Some administrators at Westford suspected that Betty might have a
hearing problem, but her parents *refused* to release Betty's medical
records to the school.  For many years, they hid that information
from Betty *herself*.  They abused Betty in other ways, but I've never
asked for details.  Meanwhile, Betty's teachers seated her in the back
of the class and attributed Betty's poor grades to daydreaming.

Now, Betty lives with her aunt and uncle, works as a sales clerk,
takes classes at a community college, and has a self-esteem that's
about as tall as my ankle.  She doesn't want to sue Westford, either.
Anne says that in order to get into a better college, Betty will need
good letters of recommendation from her teachers, and a lawsuit won't
get her such letters.

The more I work in deaf ed, the more I hear stories of astounding
incompetence.  And I used to think the *mainstream* public-education
system had problems.
--
seth gordon ... <sethg@silver.lcs.mit.edu>   ... .sig under construction;
mit bs '91  ... learning ctr 4 deaf children ... pardon the inconvenience
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