A DISTURBING REPORT
Seems that a new study shows that children with disabilities who are in school get suspended twice as often as do other kids.  Read on, and I discuss below:
"Students with disabilities are being suspended from school at about twice the rate of their typically developing peers, with odds soaring even higher depending on the child’s race.
Some 13 percent of kids with special needs across the country were suspended during the 2009-2010 school year. That compares with just over 7 percent of other students.
The findings come from a review of civil rights data from the U.S. Department of Education that was conducted by the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the University of California, Los Angeles. The analysis, released Tuesday, reflects the experiences of students in nearly 7,000 school districts representing about 85 percent of children enrolled in public education.
While all students with disabilities experienced a higher rate of suspension, the report finds that black children with disabilities were even more likely to be disciplined with 25 percent of kindergarten through 12th-graders given out-of-school suspensions.
What’s more, both groups — students with disabilities and black students — were also more likely to be suspended repeatedly, according to the report.
Across the nation, however, discipline does not appear to be handled uniformly. In over 400 school districts, 25 percent of students with disabilities were given out-of-school suspensions. Meanwhile, hundreds of other districts suspended fewer than 3 percent of students in this population, the report found.
“We know that schools can support teachers and improve learning environments for children without forcing so many students to lose valuable days of instruction,” said Daniel J. Losen, director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies and lead author of the study. “The incredibly high numbers of students barred from school, often for the most minor infractions, defies common sense and reveals patterns of school exclusion along the lines of race and disability status that must be rejected by all members of the public school community.”


So how does this relate to the Moebius community?  Well, parents, seems like--it could happen to your kid.

Now don't get me wrong.  I think as parents, we have to try our best to be objective, and to look at things in a clear-eyed way.  We have to look at the evidence.  If your child is accused of doing wrong in school, hey, no matter how much we love 'em, we can't assume every time that our child is innocent and is being done wrong.  There's no guarantee of that.

At the same time, you can imagine how some subtle prejudices can creep in to the minds and actions of educators.  No one is immune.  If there is an incident between child A and child B, while child A looks "normal" and doesn't have special needs, while child B perhaps has Moebius (let's say), then you can see how a teacher--who maybe didn't see the whole thing but thinks he/she did--might tend to see it a certain way.  Hey, child A is normal, child B is different and looks different.  There can be that subtle assumption, probably an unconscious one, that says--you just assume that the kid who looks different must be the one who misbehaved; he/she doesn't look "normal" so maybe he is assumed not to behave "normally", either.  We all know, I would hope, that that's not the way you want to look at a situation like this, but everyone--including educators--can be affected by prejudice, subtle as they can be.

That's why as parents we have to try to look at the evidence and be as objective as we can, while still being advocates for our kids, too.  It can be a tough line to walk.  But we have to do our best.  If your special-needs child gets in trouble at school, look at it carefully in every way possible.  And keep this study in mind when doing so.


“I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they're right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.”
Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962)