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Search Terms: Individuals with Disabilities Education Act

Document 179 of 234.

March 26, 1999, Friday

SECTION: Editorial; Ed. FINAL; Pg. 64A

LENGTH: 688 words

HEADLINE: GOOD INTENTIONS, BUT A BAD IDEA

BYLINE: Mike Rosen

BODY:
A recent Supreme Court ruling will force an Iowa school district to spend as much as $50,000 a year to accommodate a severely handicapped student. The decision puts every school district in the country in jeopardy of incurring huge new costs. In this case, the ruling wasn't so much a matter of judicial activism as it was an arguably rational interpretation of what has become an irrational law.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) was originally sold as a means to guarantee that children with disabilities receive ''free appropriatepublic education.'' Just like the Americans with Disabilities Act, which makes heavy use of the word ''reasonable,'' the IDEA was a well-intentioned concept that's been taken to absurd extremes. Terms like appropriate and reasonable take on a different meaning to special-interest activists and bureaucrats than to the rest of us. In the Iowa case, the court ruled that money is no object when it comes to the costs of accommodating Garret Frey, a 14-year-old boy paralyzed from the neck down since the age of 4. In school, Garret requires a full-time attendant to perform urinary catheterization, suctioning of his tracheotomy, feeding, repositioning him in his wheelchair, and monitoring his blood pressure and the operation of his ventilator. At issue here is the controversial policy of ''mainstreaming.'' This was a large part of the original IDEA agenda. Its advocates are adamant that handicapped students not be taught in a special environment, but that they be mainstreamed in standard classrooms. While it's not unreasonable to make accommodations for students with some kinds of disabilities, dealing with severely handicapped students can create big problems for everyone else. In Garret's situation, it's extremely expensive; in the case of students with behavior disorders, it can be seriously disruptive for the rest of the kids.

This is a classic confrontation between concentrated and diffused interests. Not all parents of children with severe handicaps agree with the mainstreaming approach. But those who do represent an activist concentrated interest. Understandably, they care more about their kids than yours, and they're willing to go to great lengths to protect what they see as their interests, at your expense. The diffused interest - parents of non-handicapped kids - aren't organized or even engaged in this issue. That leaves the field open to the activists.

In Colorado, we spend about $14,000 per capita each year on special education students, compared with about $5,000 on everyone else. With special education expanding by leaps and bounds - in students, teachers and administrators - this is becoming a growth industry, with an agenda of its own, competing for limited educational funds.

Absent from conventional media reports on the Garret Frey story was an explanation in Slate, the on- line news magazine, of how Garret came to be paralyzed:

''The boy was injured when, after his father put him on the back of a motorcycle, the baby blanket that the father placed around his shoulders became entwined with the cycle's drive shaft, breaking the boy's neck and snapping his spinal cord. The parents sued the motorcycle manufacturer and accepted a settlement offer of $1.3 million. Leaving aside the question of how it is that anything about the motorcycle design or manufacture could have been nearly as implicated as the father's ill-advised decision to put the 4-year-old on a motorcycle, it should be noted that the $1.3 million was primarily proffered to pay for the costs entailed by the boy's injury.''
Now, none of this is Garret's fault. But the cost to the school district of mainstreaming him is unreasonable. The Freys could have paid for it themselves out of the settlement. They didn't want to. Apparently they like to sue. And as long as laws like IDEA are on the books, untempered by common sense, lawyerly opportunists will take advantage of them. For Congress to make things right, it would need to muster the courage to challenge the disabled lobby. Don't hold your breath.

NOTES:
COLUMN
Mike Rosen's radio show airs daily from 9 a.m. to noon on 850 KOA.

LOAD-DATE: March 27, 1999

Document 179 of 234.


Search Terms: Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
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