From the Chicago Tribune:

A Chicago study has found that high absence rates among students with disabilities are the largest factor explaining the difference in their academic performance when compared with nondisabled peers.

The report, by the Consortium on Chicago School Research, found that students with disabilities missed on average 5 to 11 days more days per semester than students who had not been diagnosed with a disability. It was not clear whether the drop in attendance caused poor performance, or whether low performance caused frustration that prompted students to miss school.

The Chicago Public Schools reports that 70 percent of ninth grade students without identified disabilities go on to graduate. Only 50 percent of students with disabilities graduate; of students diagnosed with emotional disturbances, only 25 percent graduate.

From the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

A school district in the Cleveland area has come up with a novel way to save money. It plans to convert an elementary school with low enrollment into a school for kids with emotional disabilities, and bring back up to fifty students who are now being sent to programs outside the district.

The plan is expected to stir controversy, but could save the district $1.25 million annually. “If I had my druthers, I wouldn’t want to do it. But we have to be responsible to the taxpayers,” said superintendent Joffrey Jones.

From the St. Petersburg Times,  Tampa Tribune:

Three civil rights groups have filed a class action complaint with the Florida Department of Education alleging that students with disabilities in the Hillsborough schools were neglected and disciplined instead of being given counseling and support services required by federal law.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, the Advocacy Center for Persons with Disabilities and the NAACP joined forces to file the complaint over the Hillsborough school district’s treatment of students with emotional and behavioral disabilities.

The complaint asks the state to force Hillsborough to transform a “culture of neglect and overly harsh discipline” that puts students with disabilities on a path to jail and prison.

… Punishing students with disabilities instead of providing them with services that promote positive behavior “appears to occur more frequently with students of color,” according to the complaint.

Similar complaints have been filed against Palm Beach County, as well as in Louisiana and Mississippi.

“This problem is not limited to Palm Beach and Hillsborough,” said Brandi Davis, a lawyer from the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala. “This is a state and national problem.

Associated Press on WDAM-TV [New Orleans NBC affiliate] and the [New Orleans] Times-Picayune:

A report released by a non-profit group shows that children in group homes licensed by the state of Louisiana aren’t properly protected, and are placed in facilities that in many cases have been repeatedly cited for safety and health violations.

The Advocacy Center says in its report that children … too often aren’t given the mental health treatment, medical care and protection they should receive.

… Currently, the state has no power to issue civil fines against care providers that fail to meet minimum licensing standards, according to the report. This has led to some homes being cited year after year for similar violations.

From the Chicago Tribune:

Students with mental illness are becoming more common in Illinois public schools, and consequently school districts face skyrocketing bills for tuition at therapeutic private schools.

At a time when the state’s budget woes have stanched the flow of new money to public schools, its budget for private tuition has grown by double digits each of the last five years, to $139.4 million this year from $47.1 million in 2003.

Driving the increase, in part, is the fact that emotionally disturbed children in Illinois are much more likely to attend private schools-often at taxpayers’ expense-than students in other state

From the Houston Chronicle:

Nearly half of the youths locked up in the Harris County Juvenile Detention Center [have] mental health problems – far more than the estimated 20 percent with mental disorders in the general youth population – figures released Thursday show. [Harris County includes Houston.]

These youngsters, mostly teenagers, have been diagnosed with maladies including bipolar and attention deficit disorders, according to data compiled by a group of organizations studying the issue. Nearly 20 percent have severe emotional problems, the data show, and a quarter had never been diagnosed previously.

“For the first time ever we’ve collected amazing data that really give us the hard facts about what issues are there and what diagnosis we need to treat,” said Betsy Schwartz, president of Mental Health America of Greater Houston. The nonprofit agency and the county juvenile probation department are coordinating Operation Redirect, a collaboration of local groups trying to prevent mentally ill kids from ending up behind bars.

See related posts:

• Mentally ill strain Georgia prisons
• Editorial: Help — not jail — needed for people with mental illness

From the Boston Globe:

There is a role for aversive therapy if it is practiced with great restraint and respect. But such was not the case in August, when two emotionally disturbed teens in a Stoughton group home run by the Rotenberg center were given dozens of electrical shocks at the direction of a telephone caller posing as a medical supervisor. That caller was later identified as a former student.

The fact that the staff was so easily duped speaks to both poor screening of new hires and a dangerous lack of training. On that night, at least, the center resembled not a therapeutic environment but the infamous Milgram experiment, which measured the willingness of ordinary people to hurt a test subject based on nothing more than the verbal order of a phony scientist.

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