Two reports from the [Nashville] Tenneseean: Special ed kids segregated, report finds; and  Special education overhaul is urged:

A task force of parents, educators, and advocates has concluded that students receiving special education services in the Metro Nashville school district are unnecessarily segregated, and need to be more fully included in typical classrooms. The study also concluded that teachers need more training and support.

Among the report’s findings: Almost a third of the school district’s special ed students spend less than half their time in a general education classroom. Some 75 percent of students with intellectual disabilities are limited to self-contained classrooms for at least half of each school day.

The report by the task force, appointed by Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, echoed many of the findings of an earlier state audit that called the district’s practices “horrifying.”

Mayor Dean has said that reforming special education services is one of his top priorities.

From the Washington Post:

At a town hall meeting this week in Las Cruces, New Mexico, presidential candidate John McCain backed off his earlier comments linking vaccines with autism and called for research to find answers. He also called for more funding for special education, but offered no specifics. From the transcript:

… a terrible thing that’s happened in America recently, as I know you all know, is the rise of autism. We don’t know. We don’t know what causes it. There’s a huge debate going on now about vaccinations. And I’ve read and studied and gotten briefings, and I don’t know all the answers.

But I do know it’s a fact that autism is on a dramatic rise in the United States of America. And we’ve got to find the cause of it.

But, meanwhile, we’re going to have to increase funding for special education. I mean, it’s just — it’s just a fact. And that’s expensive, but it seems to me the kind of country we are, that that should have one of our priorities, along with our most gifted.

See earlier posts:

• Reaction to McCain comments on autism, vaccines
• ‘What studies show is not reflected in what candidates say’

From Youtube.com:

At a town hall meeting in Raleigh, North Carolina, Senator Barack Obama was questioned by woman who identified herself as the mother of a child with Down syndrome who had leukemia and had undergone open heart surgery. She said her son’s name is Adam.

Q: The doctors in the hospital were commenting that I was lucky that he was getting any benefits at all, because he wasn’t really going to be anything in life. He was just going to be a dependent on everybody’s social security. My question, sir, is what are you going to do about changing the word retardation, disabled, genetically altered, for our children and for our future children, for everybody here in the United States, to make a difference in their lives, to include them, sir.

Obama: … In terms of terminology — I think the word retardation is a bad word. That’s old. We need to put that to bed …

…. I have said that as president, my goal will be to achieve full funding of special education. Because no child is disposable, every every child is special, and we should make sure that we’ve got the resources in place without taking money from other children in order that they can learn and succeed and achieve their full potential. So God bless Adam. We love Adam, and thanks very much for the wonderful question.

From the [Willmar, Minnesota] West Central Tribune, AP/St. Paul Pioneer Press:

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit accusing a Minnesota special education teacher of mistreating an elementary school student with disabilities through the use of excessive physical restraints and a locked timeout room. The court found that the actions were reasonable, and were not a substantial departure from accepted professional practice.

An earlier investigation by the Minnesota Department of Education found numerous violations of state and federal special education laws in the teacher’s treatment of the student and in her documentation of incidents in her classroom.

A lawyer for Jackie Nelson, the girl’s mother, said she plans to file an appeal.

From CNN, the Associated Press, USA Today, Reuters:

A quarter of a million schoolchildren were spanked or paddled in school last year, and students who are members of minority groups or have disabilities got a disproportionate share of the punishment, according to a study by a human rights group.

The study, by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union, analyzed Education Department data. It found that corporal punishment remains widespread across the South, although it has been outlawed in a majority of states.

The two groups said that corporal punishment in schools creates a “violent and degrading school environment.” They want federal and state lawmakers to ban it.

Georgia eighth-grader had been repeatedly locked in seclusion room for up to seven hours at a time, according to court documents

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Jonathan King, who had ADHD, had told teachers at his alternative public school that he couldn’t stand being locked up. He threatened suicide several times before hanging himself in the seclusion room in 2004 with a cord a teacher provided him to hold up his pants.

A lawyer for the Alpine Program in Gainesville said there is no law addressing the use of seclusion rooms in schools, and that under Georgia law the school can’t be held accountable for Jonathan’s actions.

While there are data available on suicide in public schools, there are no specific data on suicides in seclusion rooms.

Officials for the Georgia Advocacy Office say Jonathan’s case points to this lack of data and oversight.
“This is not an isolated incident. In Georgia, we don’t have any particular rules about seclusion rooms and restraint,” said Ruby Moore, executive director of the Georgia Advocacy Office, one of 50 state offices providing advocacy for the disabled.

From the editors of the New York Times:

Many of America’s juvenile jails would be empty if the public schools obeyed federal law and provided disabled children with the special instruction that they need. Instead, these children are allowed to fall behind. When they act out, they are often suspended or expelled, which makes them more likely to commit crimes and land in jails where they can count on even less help.

A report from the Texas Youth Commission’s ombudsman says more than 40 per cent of the students in juvenile custody in the state have disabilities. Yet the Texas juvenile justice system provides virtually no special education services to those children.

The legislature should require localities to provide students with the special education services that they are entitled to under federal law, “instead of just dumping them onto streets,” the editors say. And the juvenile justice system must provide educational services as well.

Texas has both a moral and legal obligation to remake a system that is crippling, then writing off, the state’s most vulnerable children.