I'm 100% behind changing the conversation from blaming teachers for our education woes, but there is one argument advanced by some teachers (even on dkos), which angers me to no end.
The argument is that teachers can't do their jobs because special needs kids have too many rights now.
Well, my son has a condition called Aspergers. It is a form of autism, though it among the high functioning variety. I also have a nephew, who is very low functioning.
Both my sister and I have found dealing the school systems challenging. Ironically in very different ways. My nephew is non verbal. My son is in the 98th percentile across the board. This variable heavily effects the way the school approaches, which track the kids go into.
The similarity in both our circumstances is the almost immediate resentment by the teachers and staff shown to my sister and I.
With my son, teachers want to treat him the same way they treat any other child. They do this because they want him recorded in the school's testing statistics. This may sound like a conspiracy, but my ex-wife and I are on my son's 4th school now. He is in the 5th grade.
Each time we've changed schools, we tell them the issues he has. They are open to options, but then something magic happens. They test him, and he always outperforms his grade level. All of a sudden they start pushing us into regular track programs.
The problem is that the teachers he gets have no understanding of his condition. He has trouble managing social situations, which can lead to some startling fits thrown. Every time this happens he becomes more alienated from his classmates.
These teachers tend to use the same sadistic humiliation techniques on him, that they've always used since I was in school. For some reason these adults think the best way to correct behavior is to embarrass a child in front of their peers. I've just accepted that cruelty and teaching must somehow be related, because that is just the way it is.
The problem is that my son can't manage this technique the way other children might. Once he becomes anxious, he can no longer manage his emotions. He also struggles with social cues, so dark sarcasm causes him to shut down.
The result is that my son thinks of himself as a bad kid. He thinks of himself this way, because that is what teachers have taught him. His academic performance is irrelevant.
My nephew on the other hand is immediately cast off into special classes, and all discussion stops. They don't record his progress or have expectations on the teachers there. Effectively they just warehouse the disabled children, who won't be counted against the school's performance. My sister has to arrange behavioral specialist visits to the school herself.
Things are better than they used to be, but only because parents have demanded better treatment of special needs children. The result of those demands has been ingrained resentment among teachers. This resentment breeds an institutional discrimination towards special needs children.
I see this discrimination every time I read a comment blaming special needs rights for the overall struggles in schools. I also see teachers blame immigrant children and poor urban children without pre K education.
Every time I see this kind of displacement of blame, I'm less sympathetic to teachers in general.