As a director of special education in Maine I must address the rampant misinformation flashing from the January 27 editorial on special education, especially regarding eligibility and funding. It is illegal and unethical to base eligibility decisions on one source of data about a child; it is equally illegal to base that decision on any funding considerations. Also, special education was never intended to cover every student in a district, therefore some criteria for establishing eligibility is imperative. I suggest that the potentially flammable subject of special education should be given considerably more respect and research before the media or legislators make of inaccurate or misleading comments.

Special education was “created” in 1975 by landmark legislation that released children with disabilities from centuries of despair and neglect. PL 94-142, predicated on the Brown desegregation decision in 1954, literally opened the doors of public education to children whom society had segregated based on a quirk of nature, birth or environment. Over the next 30+ years special education identifications have soared and the severity of disabilities has also dramatically increased. No one can argue with the fact that public education today is being inundated with children of enormous diversity in every conceivable aspect of language, culture, class and environment. We are now faced with the impending reality that every student in a district could, without standards of identification congruent with federal statute, be eligible for special education.

According to federal statute (Individual with Disabilities Education Act, 2004), a child must meet three criteria in order to be eligible for special education: they must have a diagnosed disability; that disability must be causing an adverse effect on the child’s ability to make progress in the general education curriculum; and the child must also require specially designed instruction. Federal and state special education statute and regulations are based firmly on a foundation of a TEAM approach to decisions about eligibility and services. This team approach, the Pupil Evaluation Team, is composed of people that have one focus - that child and the needs. However, teams are also composed of human beings, each with their own knowledge base and opinion, and sometimes it is difficult to reach consensus. I am thankful that this human consideration is so essential to special education and that special education cannot be reduced to a formula or a number like, for example, the AYP designation under No Child Left Behind.

The language proposed for adverse effect simply codifies the process that schools have always used to determine eligibility. There is nothing new or startling about the draft language. The proposed definition, which is completely consistent with federal statute and national best practices, gives the entire team, of which the parent is an integral component; a structure for the discussion about the child’s eligibility for special education but it does not constrain the process. The language is not there to decrease referrals to special education; it is there to ensure that the children that really need special education do qualify for services. This language is not special to Maine; it meets federal regulatory guidelines. It is very disturbing to view the current anxiety rampant in families in the state who have undoubtedly been assured by advocates and lawyers that the special education directors will use this supposedly new language as a weapon to keep children out of special education or, even more alarming, may discharge children from their current services. This level of anxiety, which has to be profoundly disturbing to parents, is completely unfounded and unwarranted. It flies in the face of established practices as well as federal statute.

Children on the autistic spectrum compose the fastest growing group and these children demonstrate huge deficits in social and language functioning. There are few standardized tests that measure these intangible skills, which is why the proposed language on adverse effect includes provisions to use observations and other more subjective means to measure these skills. Asperger’s is an enormous disability and I cannot imagine not qualifying a child under this category, or not continuing current services. Advocates and lawyers that say otherwise are broadcasting in error. I hope that legislators will turn to the experts in special education, specifically the directors, for a more accurate description of why we need a structured description of adverse effect.