According to this newswire, California School for the Deaf has agreed to set up a day class for deaf students with additional needs. California is a bellweather for the rest of the nation, traditionally. Does the settlement of this lawsuit by a family with a deaf autistic child, mean that more schools for the deaf will have to set up classes for deaf students with additional disabilities?
What does this mean for administrators of schools for the deaf that are trying to prevent their schools from becoming "dumping grounds" for the hard-to-educate deaf students with special needs? I can not remember where I read it, but I once read somewhere a statement by an administrator of a deaf school who said he did not want his school to become a "dumping ground" for multiply-disabled deaf students.
Here is an earlier blog post (November 10, 2006) from my site at About.com that addresses the same topic.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
8 comments:
I think it's cruel for us to look down upon other deaf who also have multiple disabilities. They deserve to be educated as well. If not at deaf schools, then where do those kids go?
Actually, I think most deaf schools are already dumping grounds with the passage of IDEA and the push for inclusion.
Jamie... This has been happening for years in other states. California has been able to retain some integrity by referring such students to other resources, but its apparent that the pressure to accept such students is even reaching Fremont. Under 94-142, IDEA and No Child Left Behind, much effort (and money) was put in to mainstreaming even the most severely disabled kids, and now with school accountability being increased, public schools are looking for ways to "dump" the kids that bring down their overall academic performance.
It happens even with Deaf kids -- today there are thousands of Deaf youngsters attending schools that would have refused to accept them 30 years ago, because of their additional disabilities. We cant do that any longer, and as time goes by more and more severely disabled kids will be attending schools traditionally "reserved" for Deaf Only kids...
CSDF has had a "Special Unit" program for years where kids with unique learning problems were served, including autism. This is likely to increase in the years ahead.
Barry
"Dumping Grounds" is an expression that makes me wince.
The fact is that schools for the deaf are losing enrollment, and many are accepting deaf with special needs as a replacement.
Screening them out is leaving many children with no place to go and having to go to inappopriate placement, such as deaf MR students going to schools for the developmentally delayed where no one is able to sign meaningfully.
These kids are deaf, for goodness' sakes. That trumps all other conditions because of the primary language need.
We shouldn't allow our schools to forget these (unwanted) students and leave them to the fickle nature of the public school system. We can provide divisions in our schools and specially trained, two-discipline teachers (many who are Deaf themselves!)
Jane K. Fernandes was probably correct in shifting Hawai'i School for the Deaf into a dumping ground called HCDB, short for Hawai'i Center for the Deaf and the Blind. Her efforts at Gallaudet University were the same.... Laurent Clerc Center (MSSD and KDES were dumped into this center) and Sorenson Language and Communication Center (Gallaudet University would be dumped, should JKF continued as president)
Dumping ground?
Oregon has been taking care of those deaf students with additonal disabilities for year as far back as at least 1959 I can recall (being student there and do have those schoolmates. They were never looked down as bad as you claim.)
Even had a classmate with very severe disabilities and he sure shocked the whole class and school when he got married!
So don't claim dumping as excuse. Those schools who didn't accept them in past should be ashamed of themselves!
Schools of the deaf generally accept deaf students with multiple disabilities or mental defienency since the early 1970s in response to changing federal and state laws.
I recalled that one of my former WVSD instructor mentioned that the students with mental defienency were well off in seperate facility than tossed out with the general student body. Those students thrived more than being among with the regular student body due to physical and verbal harassment and social stigma.
The schools of the deaf usually take up unnecesary burden of taking care of students with multiple disabilities beyond their abilities to provide the kind of education or functionable environment.
In my school, WV School for the Deaf, students with mental defienency (MD) usually dumped in the sublevel classrooms with little windows and hide them from the rest of students and visitors.
The students with "MD" tend to be ended up as a personal slave to other regular students or do craft tasks for their teachers' own pockets, etc.
My school created the title of students with MD - "Adjustment Class" as politically correct.
Many regular students were very upset about being taken class pictures with students from adjustment classes which reflected badly on the image of deaf students in general.
I support the approriate educational facility and classes for deaf students with MD than dumping them off to the so-called dumping ground. That is really unfair to regular deaf students!
Deaf students with MD should be placed in lovable and secure facility than leaving them to the wolves (regular deaf students to harass and command the students with MD around or faculty members showcasing them as some kind of freaks).
Robert L. Mason (RLM)
I hope that is comment reaches someone who can point me in the right direction.
My name is Linzie and I became Hard-of-Hearing at 16 from Bacterial Meningitis. I am currently getting my degree in Early Childhood Education to HOPEFULLY become a preschool teacher for children with hearing loss- including profoundly deaf. I can not find any preschools that accept deaf children besides the obvious Oralingua, John Tracy Clinic and the Riverside School for the Deaf. I am hoping to find somewhere in the Inland Empire that I can start working for in the next few years. My goal is to have/work for a preschool that accepts deaf children at infancy and will allow me to teach ASL to the children and their parents. I want to work
If anyone has any information on how to find these preschools or someone that I can contact I would appreciate the information.
My email address is Linzie1643@yahoo.com
Thank you,
Linzie K.
Post a Comment