The Hidden Conspiracy in Our Nation's Schools.

In recent years four violent incidents received widespread attention by the national media: shootings and killings in Mississippi, Arkansas, Oregon, and Kentucky. In each incident, young students used lethal force on unsuspecting students and teachers. Innocent children and adults were killed, seriously injured, or severely frightened. The media, educators, and average citizens voiced their anger, pain, and shock at these horrific acts. Such violent acts are a reflection of what might be called a "hidden conspiracy" in our nation's schools. Is there some type of underground movement by our children and adolescents? Should we contact the FBI? Fortunately, the answer to these questions is no. Unfortunately, the hidden conspiracy represents the systematic and intentional neglect of students with emotional or behavioral disorders (E/BD) by teachers, school administrators, and congressional leaders. This is a serious indictment of our schools, government, and society. This accusation is not a socalled bleeding-heart liberal's conspiracy theory. A preponderance of evidence regarding government and school policies in the United States reflects our nation's unwillingness to provide proactive interventions for students with E/BD. Underidentification In 1993, the National Mental Health Association and the Federation of Families for Children's Mental Health published a brochure titled All Systems Failure: An Examination of the Results of Neglecting the Needs of Children with Serious Emotional Disturbance. One only has to look at the national statistics compiled by the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) to understand the policies of neglect by our schools and government leaders. The federal government's conservative estimate is that approximately 2% of our nation's youth are experiencing E/BD. This is a gross underestimation of the actual number of students with F/BD (Costello, Messer, Bird, Cohen, & Reinherz, 1998). In 1995 the National Centers for Disease Control conducted a survey of 4,000 middle and high school students in Alabama and found that 20 had carried a weapon to school, 33% had been in a fight, 9% had attempted suicide, and 5% had vomited or taken a laxative to lose weight (cited in Courtney, 1995). These figures are frightening; they clearly demonstrate that the OSERS projection is an appalling underestimation. What is even more frightening is that less than 1% of school-aged children in the United States are identified as having E/BD for special education purposes. Why is the federal government's estimate so low, and why do our schools identify less than half of the governments' already low projections? When the Education for All Handicapped Children Act was passed in 1975, the federal government published rules and regulations containing the definition of emotional disturbance (ED). Special education professionals have criticized the federal definition because it is vague and can be interpreted differently by state education agencies (Kauffman, 1997). One controversial aspect of the federal definition is the exclusionary statement that "the term does not include children who are socially maladjusted unless it is determined that they are seriously emotionally disturbed." in relationship to the main part of the definition, this statement is ludicrous, since Part b of the definition refers to "an inability to build or maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships with peers or adults." Socially maladjusted students exhibit extremely poor relationships with their peers and/or adults; therefore, it seems that our government defined ED in a way that enables schools to exclude students with conduct disorders or social maladjustment from receiving special education and related services. The National Mental Health and Special Education Coalition (NMHSEC) developed the terminology emotional or behavioral disorders. The Coalition's terminology and definition were designed to alleviate the problems associated with the federal definition. …