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| Image of cartoon character mice with sunglasses and canes chasing after the back of a booted farmer's wife. |
Megan A. Conway, Ph.D.
RDS Managing Editor
“Three blind mice…see how they
run…they all ran after the farmer’s wife, who cut off their tails with a
carving knife…”
See what
happens when a blind mouse challenges the farmer’s wife? Obviously this little
nursery rhyme has been through more literary and sociopolitical analysis than
anyone has time to contemplate, but I think it is a rather fitting analogy for
where people with disabilities are at in the barnyard of education. It’s just
fine if we are skulking in the corner nibbling on bits of leftover grain, but
the minute we come out to play with the humans, BAM.
As a
deaf-blind person who received her doctorate in Special Education from an
esteemed university, I have to admit that I do have some biases when it comes
to the topic of Special Education and educators in general. When I went into
education, I wanted to make a difference for others like me and blah, blah,
blah. I thought it was weird that I was the only one with a disability in my
doctoral cohort—no, make that my entire doctoral program. People with
disabilities must just not be interested in education? Or perhaps they did not
“qualify”? Anyway, it soon became apparent that most of the special education
professors and doctoral students I was working with did not know what they were
talking about. Okay, so I am not being fair. I did learn a lot about how to
count (and the deep meaning of) the number of times someone does “repetitive
head banging behavior.” However, when I tried to turn the topic to something
that I saw as meaningful, such as, “Why the heck won’t you guys facilitate my
participation in this class by using my assistive listening device,” I was met
with eye rolling and that look of non-gimp solidarity: “Oh here she goes
again.”
Over a
decade later, here I go again. Being a noble and worthy academic, I decided that
I needed to pull apart my unscholarly biases by doing some online research. It
is easy to find statistics on children with disabilities in special education,
since from day one they are identified, branded with the scarlet “S” and put to
work. Here’s what I found.
Some
fast facts from the National Center for Education Statistics:
- · 13% of all children enrolled in public schools receive special education services.
- · 38% of these have “learning disabilities”
- (http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d10/tables/dt10_045.asp?referrer=list)
- · 15% of all special education students, and 48% of those with an intellectual disability, spend more than 60% of their time outside a “regular” classroom.
- · 21% spend “from 21-60%” of their time outside the regular classroom.
- · 48% spend “less than 21%” of their time outside the regular classroom.
- (http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=59)
I
thought this was a strange way to present statistics on inclusion, “The percent
of students with disabilities who spend between a low percent and a high
percent not in a regular classroom.” And are lunch and recess considered “time
in the regular classroom” (I’ll bet they are). These numbers don’t really tell
us very much, so I have interpreted these statistics for the layperson in a
less optimistic fashion:
- · Almost half of all students with intellectual disabilities spend over half their time in a segregated setting.
- · Nearly one quarter of all special education students spend half their time in a segregated setting.
- · Only half of all special education students spend less than a quarter of their time in the regular classroom.
- · Five percent of all public school students have been diagnosed with a “specific learning disability.”
I was
pleased to find out that the Department of Education still views Special
Education as a privilege (privileges are cool)!
“Special
education services through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
(IDEA) are available only for eligible children and youth. Eligible
children and youth are those identified by a team of professionals as having a
disability that adversely affects academic performance and as being in need of
special education and related services.” (http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cwd.asp)
Oh dear.
I found that I was having a hard time putting my biases to bed. Let’s just say
I was only seeing what I wanted to see. I decided to investigate how many
teachers and postsecondary faculty there are with a disability. So I did a
Google search and came up with…not much. Apparently there is some difficulty in
identifying anyone past the age of 18 who has a disability because of
“confidentiality” concerns. Funny how when you are in primary and secondary
school you are supposed to wear your disability like a badge of shame (or
courage) but when you turn 18 you are best advised to hide it. JAN does address
the question of educators who have disabilities, without actually giving us a
real answer (the statistics are a bit of a leap of faith, sorry JAN):
“Question:
How many educators with
disabilities are working today?
Answer:
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly four million educators,
specifically teachers, working in preschool to secondary settings were employed
in the United States in 2006. In addition, there were close to 1.7 million
professionals who taught in post-secondary settings, ranging from four year
colleges and universities to technology and culinary schools in that same year
(Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2009). If disabilities affect one-fifth of all
Americans (Census Bureau, 2008), then close to 1.1 million educators, from
preschool teachers to post-secondary professors and instructors, could be in
need of job accommodations.”
(https://askjan.org/media/educators.html)
Twenty
percent of teachers and higher education faculty are disabled? Where are these
people? Not on my block, baby. The fact
is, we have no idea how many teachers or professors have a disability, but we
can speculate that they are highly underrepresented. If 20% of the population
has a disability, and ?% of educators have a disability, where does that leave
us? In the corner of the barnyard, nursing our wounded tails.
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| Image of a knife with wooden handle, tip down. |
