Youth with Disabilities Problem
Introduction
Current issues and statistics of the juveniles experiencing disabilities and their disproportional representation in the juvenile justice system.
The attitude of the educational system towards the disabled students and the role of the teachers in the process.
Legislation, enforcement and advocacy regarding the problems of this group of children.
The role of the police and other enforcement authorities in cases with disabled juveniles that commit minor offences.
Recommendations.
Conclusion
INTRODUCTION
The White Paper discusses the current situation with the system that disproportionately targets juveniles with disability problems in regard with School-to-Prison Pipeline.
What is a school-to-prison pipeline? This is the sum of policies and practices that pushes the school children, especially the children who are at risk, out of the classrooms and directs them into the juvenile and criminal justice systems. The pipeline demonstrates the priority of incarceration over education.
CURRENT ISSUES AND STATISTICS
For majority of the students, the pipeline begins in the public schools. Overcrowded classrooms, deficiency of properly and well-qualified teachers, lack of sufficient funding for employing counselors, special educational services, situate the students into second class environments and being often left without supervision, push them into court involvement.(Pediatrics, 2003, p. 1207) Even the schools may encourage the dropouts as a response to the tension from test-based accountability systems such as the No Child Left Behind Act, which creates unnecessary pressure over the low-performing students to cover the requirements.
On the other side, a number of studies show that about eighty five percent of youth in juvenile detention facilities have disabilities that make them appropriate for special education services and the statistics also show that only thirty seven percent take advantage from these services while in school. A disproportionate percentage of these detained juveniles are youth of color.
Lacking of covering the elementary requirements for a normal educational process the schools have brought in zero-tolerance policies that automatically inflict severe punishment irrespective of circumstances. According to these policies the students are suspended from school for minor misdemeanors as “bringing nail clippers or scissors at school.” (ACLU, 2016, Web) The suspension rates have increased harshly in recent years. From running to 1.7 million in 1974 they increased to 3.1 million in 2000. This increase has been more dramatic for the disabled children and the children of color.
Schools continue to suspend students with disabilities at disproportionate rates despite more than four decades of political and scholarly attention to this issue. Across the country, students with disabilities are more than twice as likely to be excluded from school (13%) than students without disabilities (6%) The statistics show worse numbers for students of color with disabilities
Out-of-School Suspension Rates by Race and Disability Status, 2009–2010
(NDA, 2015, p. 16)
Representing the opinion of the court in the case Brown v. Board of Education, Chief Justice Warren stated: “In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunities of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right that must be made available on equal terms.” (Warren, 1954, p. 493) The school-to-prison pipeline like an epidemic disease is spreading among the schools across the country. Very often, students are suspended, expelled or even arrested for minor offenses that leave visits to the principal’s office a thing of the past. Statistics reflect that these policies disproportionately target students of color and those with a history of abuse, neglect, poverty or learning disabilities.
THE ATTITUDE OF THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM TOWARDS THE DISABLED STUDENTS AND THE ROLE OF THE TEACHERS IN THE PROCESS
It is very difficult to locate the exact reason for the existence of the school-to-prison pipeline. Many assign it to the zero tolerance policies that were formed after the massacre in the Columbine High School that occurred in 1999. Others accuse educators, blaming them of pushing out students who had bad results on standardized tests trying to improve the overall test scores of school. Some blame the drastic policing efforts. There are many reasons but not so many solutions.
Juveniles from two groups - color minorities and children with disabilities - are represented in the school-to-prison pipeline very disproportionately. As an example is the fact that the African-American students are 3.5 times more likely to be suspended from school than their white classmates is published in a nationwide study carried out by the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights. Eighteen percent of the students are black, but they constitute forty six percent of those who are more than once suspended.
The numbers of the students with disabilities are also very alarming. According to a report, it was found out that while 8.6 percent of the children in public schools had been identified as having learning disabilities.
The disparities between the races are more vivid for students with disabilities. For every four black children with disabilities one was suspended at least once from school while the proportion among the white students was one for every eleven students says a report of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies of the Civil Rights Project at ACLU (Ibid).
Keeping the children at-risk in class can be an arduous mission for educators, but the teachers in the classrooms have the unique possibility to draw away students from the school-to-prison pipeline.
The five responsive shifts in teacher’s thinking applied even when a student’s behavior escalates. They can be the key to rerouting the school-to-prison pipeline. (Tolerance Teaching Magazine, Web)
LEGISLATION, ENFORCEMENT AND ADVOCACY
Not all students have visible disabilities. Many of them have invisible once as specific learning disability (SLD), emotional disturbance, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or posttraumatic stress disorder. Schools suspend students of color and students with disabilities much more times the rate of their white schoolmates. Schools suspend students of color with individualized education plans, nevertheless they have disabilities or not, to the most disproportionate degree.
. Students with disabilities and their families need information, consultations and training how to effectively use the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) as a tool to provide better educational services. IDEA is a federal law that demands schools to gratify the educational needs of particular students who have disabilities. For the purpose, schools must evaluate students that are suspected of having disabilities, including learning disabilities, since not every child who experience learning and attention issues qualifies for special education services under IDEA. IDEA has six pillars that provide its proper implementation.
The first pillar is the Individualized Education Program (IEP) that “the school system must design to meet the unique needs of every child with disabilities.” (Phillip C. v. Jefferson County Board of Education, Web).
The next pillar is the Free Appropriate Public Education (FEPA) that is established in the paragraph 1400 of the United States Constitution and which declares: “education that emphasizes special education and related services designed to meet their unique needs and prepare them for further education, employment, and independent living.” (20 U.S.C. §1400(c)(5)(A)(i), Web).
The third pillar is the Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) that enacts the principle that the children with disabilities have to be educated together with their school-mates who are nondisabled, since their disabilities are not in a severe form which will make the normal educational course impossible.
On the fourth place comes the Appropriate Evaluation which means that the children must be properly evaluated in order to minimize the number of misidentifications, to provide different assessment tools and strategies, to be obstructive to the use of any single evaluation as the only criteria for determination in which special education services the student will be placed. It also provides protections against evaluations that are racially or culturally discriminatory. Overall it helps the student through this evaluation to get the most proper for his/her situation services.
The fifth place is for the Parent and Teacher Participation. The good partnership between parents and teachers is the milestone for the individual program’s success. Teachers and parents need to work together and communicate in order to determine the best varieties of working with and providing information to each other for the student. During the whole IEP process the families should be kept informed about any decisions regarding their specific student. Parents and teachers, together or alone are able to argue any decisions that they consider as inappropriate for the student.
The last but nut not by significance are the Procedural Safeguards. IDEA provides procedural safeguards established to protect the rights of the disabled children and their families. They are designed to ensure that children with disabilities receive a FAPE. The procedural safeguards provide the possibility for parents to review their child's full educational process; full parents’ participation in the IEP team meetings; parent’s participation in the decisions regarding placement. The parents have the right to request independent educational evaluations at public expense; etc.
The other legal act that needs to be mentioned is Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. It states that “No otherwise qualified individual with a disability in the United States . . . shall, solely by reason of her or his disability, be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance . . . “(29 U.S.C. 794(a), Web) It applies to all schools that receive federal funding.
The availability of accurate, consistent data is invaluable for policymakers and advocates joining efforts to break the School-to-Prison Pipeline for students with disabilities. The advocates have to assist the juveniles in all disputes that may occur during the course of their education.
THE ROLE OF THE POLICE AND OTHE ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITIES IN CASES WITH DISABLED JUVENILES THAT COMMIT MINOR OFFENCES
During the investigation of the truancy courts in Texas by the Department of Justice this year, it appeared that children as young as twelve could be tried in adult criminal court for showing up late to class or skipping it. The investigation emphasized that the schools’ severe punishments were disproportionately hurting children with disabilities and chronic illnesses.
After it had investigated the courts for systematically obstructing juveniles’ right to due process in different ways, the Department of justice signed settlement agreements with the city of Meridian, Mississippi and the Lauderdale County Youth Court. The department had declared that the policies there hurt the black students to an extent as to violate the Civil Rights Act, and the mandatory racial desegregation of the American schools in the 1960s.
Using disproportionate suspensions and expulsions from school, the district was not only denying black students the right to equal rule of law, but the right to equal education as well. After years of site visits and interviews, the representatives of the Justice Department had determined that the black students received a substantially larger share of discipline punishments than their white school-mates, and the majority of these punishments were for minor misbehaviors such as disobedience, defiance, etc.
Jody Owens, the managing attorney of the office of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Mississippi, wrote in Politico about the Meridian’s public school the following “One 15-year-old girl, for example, was suspended and sent to the Lauderdale County Juvenile Detention Center for a dress code violation. Her jacket was the wrong shade of blue.” (Owens, J., 2015, Web)
In the signed agreement with the city of Meridian and the state of Mississippi, the attorneys of the Justice Department laid out its requirements for changes in Meridian’s policies. For example, the Meridian police should perform “school-based arrests” when they really have probable cause - not when the administrators or the teacher just ask them to. In cases of serving warrants on juveniles, they have to avoid doing it at school because the kids can be traumatized by the negative attention that the procedure attracts. In any case the police get involved in school discipline matters, the children taking part in them or just witness them, must be questioned with a guardian or attorney, and informed of their Miranda rights, in a proper way so they can understand them.
RECOMMENDATIONS
As it was discussed above, the teachers play an important role in keeping the children in class. They should be supported, trained, invited to participate in designing programs in order they to withstand the misbehaviors of the students and react in the most appropriate manner.
Recently, many teachers have been getting the training they need through increasingly popular “restorative practices,” that help educators get to the root of disciplinary issues. Teachers using them often “circle up” with students when problems occur, which means they have “in-depth” facilitated conversations that force students to practice empathy and take responsibility for the way their actions affect others. But it is also obvious that teachers and educators cannot just end suspensions and hope that things will go better. There are too many cases where educators are being assaulted, and it is not taken into serious consideration. The schools must be caring and safe places for teaching and learning to become enjoyable practice. The teachers must get training on cultural awareness and diversity and they need to be taught how to build respectful and sincere relationships with students who might not be like them.
The suspension of the students and expelling them from school as a punishment when it is related to minor offences have to be avoided at all.
The school resource officers or the police officers should avoid acting in school and they are obliged to observe the civil rights of the offenders.
In case the public schools have not enough resources for financing all necessary services required, the school authority should turn to volunteers (schoolmates regarding the school disciplines and members of the community).
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, it is obvious that students with disabilities and students of color are disproportionally treated in regard to their healthy and non-colored schoolmates and they are trailed about the School-to-prison pipeline due to the disparate impact of exclusionary discipline polices, suspension from school and denying the most necessary services. Uniting the efforts of teachers, parents, authorities and community members, better results could be achieved ensuring secure and meaningful future for all children.
References
ACLU, What is the School-to-Prison Pipeline? (2016) Web Retrieved from www.aclu.org/fact-sheet/what-is-the-school-to-prison-pipeline
Advancement Project, Education on Lockdown: The Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Track, (2005), p. 15 Retrieved from www.advancementproject.org/resources/entry/education- on-lockdown-the-schoolhouse-to-jailhouse-track
Amurao, C., How bad is the School-to-Prison Pipeline? (2013), Teaching Tolerance Magazine Retrieved from www.tolerance.org/magazine/november-43-spring-2013/school-to-prison
Braking the School-to-Prison Pipeline for Students with Disabilities, National Council on Disability, 2015, Report Web
Out-of-School Suspension and Expulsion, American Academy of Pediatrics, Committee on School Health, (2003), PEDIATRICS (Vol. 112 No. 5, Nov. 2003), p. 1207, Print
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, (IDEA) (1975), Public Law No. 94-142, Web
Owens, J., How Prison Stints Replaced Study Hall, 2015, Politico (newspaper) Retrieved from www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/03/criminal-kids-juvenile-sentencing-reform
Phillip C. v. Jefferson County Bd. of Educ., 701 F. 3d 691, 694 (11th Cir. 2012), Web
United States Constitution, 29 U.S.C. 794(a); 20 U.S.C. §1400(c)(5)(A)(i), Web).
Warren, E., Brown v. Board of Education of Topeca, 347 U. S. 483 (1954), Web
