Special Ed Needs Narrowing.(Brief Article)

Special Ed Needs Narrowing Wade Horn and Douglas Tynan, "Revamping Special Education," in The Public Interest (Summer 2001), 1112 Sixteenth Street N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.

When Congress first passed what is now called the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act in 1975, its goal was to help public-school students suffering from severe physical disabilities. But the actual result has largely been to reward students who are not disabled but simply poor learners or lacking in motivation. Child psychologists Horn and Tynan suggest it's time to substantially reduce special education programs.

In the 1999-2000 school year, 6.8 million children--about 12 percent of all public school students--were placed in special education programs. But only about 10 percent of these students had severe physical disabilities. Around 46 percent of special education students were given the vague diagnosis of having "specific learning disability" or SLD. But child psychologists can't explain what SLD is, or how SLD students differ from non-disabled slow learners. University of Minnesota education professor James Ysseldyke contends that 80 percent of American schoolchildren could qualify as having the ill-defined SLD. In addition to these SLD children, all students diagnosed with attention deficit disorder (ADD) or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) also qualify for special education programs, as a result of a 1999 federal regulation.

Special-education students get numerous advantages over other students, including personal tutors and note-takers, ...