Here is an idea: Pay for you own speech therapy.
Too many parents think that it is OK for their kids to cost their neighbors 10x what they pay in taxes for the schools. We often read (including on PJM) of bleeding heart liberals who find out their kids are special needs, then, they suddenly decide to move to more rural/conservative areas because the schools are better. Well, they won’t stay better if parents with special ed kids and an entitlement mentality keep flooding them.
Many parent want their kids to be labeled because it makes them feel less guilty about being rotten parents. Instead of being the parent who didn’t read to their kid and work with them, they get to play the martyr, at least in their own mind.
Being labeled as special needs can even prevent the schools from disciplining a kid.
Many parents also want their kid labeled so that it greases the wheels of social promotion. Have a 16 year old with a second grade reading level? Well, socially promote him all the way!! How did he get that far? Well, once he started falling behind, he was put on an Individual Education Plan that required he be promoted with his peers so that he could be socialized. Never mind that he soon got completely bewildered by the classwork and fell further behind. Never mind that his teachers now had to try to teach him to balance chemical equations when he couldn’t pronounce or recognize the word “chemical” or “equation”.
Quite frankly, special ed kids need to have the old-fashioned special ed classrooms. Not to isolate them, but to allow a specialist to help them grow as much as possible. Keeping a 16 year old with other 16 years olds is stupid when his mental age is 10. All he learns is defeat, humiliation and frustration.
