"Most radical parents become radical because the district denies them," says Beth Bader, also from the American Federation of Teachers.
They want their children in class, and they see inclusion as a matter of civil rights.
Renaldo Fowler is a staff advocate at the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest and an effective expert in the legal ramifications of special education. He is the person to call if you are unhappy with the school placement of your special needs child.
Fowler is a well-spoken young man with a gentle matter, but when asked whether special education policies take away from nondisabled students, he grins condescendingly.
"I kind of smile because many of the arguments I hear from people talking about special ed in that way, they're the same arguments that they made for African American children," he says. "They're almost parallel, and that's why I think it's almost amusing. But the law says that every child is entitled to an appropriate education."
On closer examination, the comparison falls apart; children of color were discriminated against because of their race, and if their socioeconomic backgrounds may, in some instances, have affected the skills they brought to the classroom, that deficit had little to do with their native intelligence or cognitive abilities.
To say that a deaf child who is sent to a special school to learn sign language has suffered discrimination seems a leap of logic. It seems equally illogical to use civil rights rhetoric when deciding whether to remove an emotionally disturbed child--a child who is a danger to himself and to other children--from a mainstream classroom.
But in these politically correct times, just the mention of civil rights can cause teachers and school administrators to back away from hard questions.
"They are making [inclusion] a civil rights issue because then it's much more morally indefensible to say it's not a good idea," says Bader. "Our take on it is that the civil rights issue is the access to an educational program."
If school officials want to make changes in the placement of a special needs child, there are procedures to be followed. In fact, inclusion is a morass of procedure and bureaucracy.
For example, Fowler, the civil rights advocate, points to three loose-leaf notebooks. They are filled to bursting with rules and regulations pertaining to special needs student. Teachers are supposed to follow those rules, and know them by heart.
One teacher from the Cartwright district quips, "The running joke is 'Do I put the kid in special ed or do I save a tree?' There's so much paper, and everything is in triplicate, and no one reads it and no one gives a damn."
Each special ed student's IEP is expected to be reviewed on a regular basis by teachers and parents and administrators to make sure everyone's on the same page and in compliance with the law.
If parents and educators cannot agree on placement, the case can be brought before hearing officers. Eventually, parents can sue.
Since 1991, such lawsuits have been decided overwhelmingly in favor of parents seeking inclusion for a handicapped child. Courts have consistently ruled that schools have not done everything possible to accommodate a child in his or her current school placement.
Most of these lawsuits involve disruptive behaviors.
Beth Bader, the AFT spokesman on special education matters, says, "The parents want their children treated like every other child--except when they get in trouble. If their behavior is bad you can't get rid of them. You can't expel them or suspend them for exactly the same behavior that a nondisabled child gets suspended for.
"You have to go through a whole long process in order to do discipline. You have to keep the child in school. You do all the papers, you pay the lawyer, you jump through the hundred administrative hoops, and you still might not get it. Why bother in the first place?"
Phoenix-area teachers and administrators are quivering beneath that threat of litigation. They're leaving the profession; they're angry at the parents, and at the very special needs students they once committed their careers to teaching.
They worry that the anger they're feeling will spread, causing a backlash by the parents of nondisabled kids.
"Within the next couple of years, the parents of regular children are going to turn around and sue," says a special education teacher from the Cartwright district, "because their children's civil rights are being infringed upon.
"They're not getting the educational structure they need because the teachers are spending time with the special needs kids.
