Concerning special education
I teach an inclusion class that works fairly well — students with special needs get extra help from a special ed teacher who is with me every other day, and she makes sure that their testing needs are met.
But special ed in general is often abused. A couple of children at my school have “opposition disorder”, which basically means that they are unruly and disobedient. So when one of them curses at me, it’s just part of her “disability”. She is in a class with only 3 other students, and she has a paraprofessional who is required to escort her around campus to help control her behavior and stop her from instigating fights. When you also calculate the time spent by the school’s special ed coordinator, the extra time from our principal and dean of students, the school district altogether spends about 6-7 times as much to try to educate her as it would a regular student (about $30,000 extra by my rough guess) — and of course, she absolutely refuses to do any schoolwork or learn anything.
I want to help those with real disabilities, but we have to find ways to stop the abuse of the system.
