Sessions: "He Clearly Doesn't Know a Whole Lot of Anything"

I wrote this entry before leaving the States but never found an appropriate time to post.  Why not now, a few days after the inauguration of our new President?  Might as well start getting used to the status quo....

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Hi all, it has been just about one month since Donald Trump was elected to be the 45th President of the United States in a surprising and disturbing upset over Hillary Clinton.  As was true during his loooong and tiresoooome campaign, The Donald continues to delight in shocking the public with his brazen political viewpoints, bizarre social media habits, and now, his totally inappropriate choices for his cabinet members.

The hearts of Democrats everywhere are bleeding over the likes of Rex Tillerson, Exxon CEO and Putin pal, as Secretary of State; James Mattis, former "Mad Dog" Marine general, as Secretary of Defense; Betsy DeVos, GOP megadonor and public school naysayer, as Secretary of Education; Ben Carson, former Trump foe and self-pronounced government novice, as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; and Scott Pruitt, well-known climate change skeptic who brought twelve lawsuits against the EPA, as head of the same agency.  Dark times are indeed upon us.

Perhaps the scariest pick of all - for me, for Toa, for special needs and learning-disabled children in America, for similarly challenged children all over the world who look to their American counterparts as shining examples of how to succeed in the face of such disabilities and needs - is Jeff Sessions.  

One of Trump's earliest supporters during the campaign, the anti-immigration senator from Alabama has a much criticized record on race relations and was once denied a judgeship amid concerns over past comments about blacks.  As Attorney General, Sessions will head the Department of Justice.

Please see below a recent article in Forbes expressing a variety of concerns raised over Sessions' appointment as pertains to special education and disability rights.  (BTW, the Sessions outrage poured out of multiple sources the last couple weeks, so in addition to Forbes, if you're interested to know more about this vile creature, check out The Parent Herald, The Washington Post, and The Huffington Post, to name a few.  I feel sure Sesh can also be found amidst the pages of The Satanic Verses, Goethe's Faust, several volumes of the Harry Potter series, and any book by George Orwell, fiction or nonfiction.)

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Would Special Education Rights Be Safe With Jeff Sessions As U.S. Attorney General? 

Senator Jeff Sessions, if confirmed as U.S. Attorney General in the incoming Trump administration, would become the nation's top law enforcement officer.  That would make him responsible for defending and enforcing federal education laws that guarantee students with disabilities the "free appropriate public education" (FAPE) they are legally due.

But special education and disability advocates worry that he may not be up to task given the attitudes and misconceptions he revealed in statements to the Senate floor in 2000.

"Sessions perpetuates the common misconception that inclusion means throwing all students together in the same classroom, with the same curriculum and with the same supports," said Shannon Des Roches Rosa, senior editor at Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism and mother to an autistic adolescent.  "What inclusion actually means is that students are part of the same school community, with the curriculum differentiated for individualized learning styles (which may mean that students don't all have the same classes together), and supports in place for those who need them.  Research consistently demonstrates that students included in this way thrive—all the students, not just the special ed students, and even the special ed students with significant support needs."

Sessions' appointment has been condemned by the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, which called the Department of Justice's work as "vital to the disability community" but called Sessions "a staunch opponent of civil liberties."

"We have grave concerns that under Sessions, the Department of Justice would not protect the rights of disabled people and other marginalized populations," ASAN wrote.

Their concern grows from his past characterization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), passed in 1975 to ensure children with disabilities received the education they deserved as much as other students.  In his statements, Sessions said the laws that protect and ensure education to special education students "may be the single most irritating problem for teachers throughout America today" and "very sincerely" suggested that accommodations for students with disabilities are "a big factor in accelerating the decline in civility and discipline in classrooms all over America."

Sessions has already shown difficulty carrying out his legal duties to protect students with special needs while serving as Alabama's attorney general from 1994 to 1996, when he "used the power of his office to fight to preserve Alabama's long history of separate and unequal education," as Thomas J. Sugrue argues in an op-ed in The New York Times.  Despite the order of Alabama Circuit Court Judge Eugene W. Reese that the state fix the inequitable funding across the state's public schools, which had been preventing the poorest districts from providing "even basic services to students in need," Sessions spent his tenure fighting and attempting to discredit Reese.

It was four years into his first term as a U.S. senator that Sessions said on the floor, "It is clear that IDEA '97 not only undermines the educational process, it also undermines the authority of educators."

Yet his statements make it clear how little he understands IDEA, FAPE, special education, and the needs of students with disabilities.  In fact, when Sessions first describes special education students, he refers only to those with "a hearing loss, or a sight loss, or if they have difficulty moving around, in a wheelchair, or whatever."  It's unclear what "whatever" might refer to, but given that his examples are all outwardly identifiable physical disabilities, Sessions appears not to recognize that disabilities also include the vast number of less outwardly visible ones, such as autism and other developmental disabilities, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, dyslexia, mood disorders, cognitive disabilities, personality disorders, dysgraphia, sensory processing disorder and other "invisible" disabilities.

Sessions then identifies the biggest problem with IDEA as an obstacle to effective "discipline" in school.  "We are telling special children with physical disabilities, or disabilities as defined by the federal law, that they don't have to adhere to the same standards other children do," Sessions said.  "Right in the classroom, we create, by federal law, two separate standards for American citizens."

But his statements completely neglect what the purpose of special education is: to accommodate the needs of children with different abilities precisely because they cannot, developmentally or physically or cognitively, adhere to the standards set for other students.

"I can understand where he is coming from, but as a teacher of those students who get those different standards, most of my students are not capable of working on the regular standards, so we have alternate standards for children to learn," explained Melissa Patterson, a special education teacher in Milwaukee who has been working in special education since 1997.  "Some of those standards are behavior management practices, so yes, a student who knows better who slaps somebody will get suspended while a child who doesn't know better who slaps someone will get a chance to correct the behavior.  But if it continues, they get the same consequences."

Many of Patterson's children operate at the cognitive level of a 2-year-old despite being in fourth and fifth grade, she said.

"Two-year-olds don't know you don't slap someone or take away a toy, so there's a little bit of leniency," she said.  "Once they've learned it and you know they've learned it and they know better, that leniency is gone."

Rather than "undermining" the authority of educators, Patterson said IDEA leveled the playing field for students with special needs, ensuring that they receive just as much education from art, music, gym and other specialist teachers as regular education students.

"I think he needs to go sit in an actual special ed classroom and see how it works and see the good that is happening instead of what he thinks is happening because he clearly doesn't know a whole lot of anything," Patterson said.  "He needs to understand that regardless of disability, these kids are kids, and they're in school to learn.  We need to help them do that, and it's his job to enforce that that is done."

Toward the end of his statements, Sessions says he is "sorry that I'm old-fashioned and believe we should be teaching all students to be responsible for their behavior."  But his complaints actually are old-fashioned given the progress that has occurred in public education, suggested Carl Hendricksen, a 35-year veteran of special education teaching in Illinois.  Hendricksen retired from teaching special education in 2013 but the high school vocational classes he now teaches in Peoria, Illinois, still include some special education students.

"We've moved on from some of the expectations toward SPED students and the idea that if a student was acting out emotionally or physically, we should get them out of the building," Hendricksen said.  "Best practices teach the teachers and administrators that being fair is being consistent, but being consistent is not always fair.  Everybody behaves differently and functions differently, so the same punishment doesn't always fit the same crime for different people."

Hendricksen said one revelation for him during his teaching career involved thinking about what kind of treatment he would want his own children to receive.

"Students in special ed will be living, breathing citizens in this world.  How do you want to treat them?"  Hendricksen said.  "How would you want someone to treat your child?  Do I really want my kids treated like I'm treating these kids?"

Yet Sessions implied that he wanted to see more "punishments" and discipline for special education students who act out behaviorally, which is unlikely to be in the child's best interests.

"The solution would be understanding why those students have difficulties, and creating trainings based on that understanding, rather than suppression or 'extinction' or bribing, all of which ignore the reasons those students are extremely frustrated," Des Roches Rosa explained.  "Most often the students are having a hard time communicating what is wrong with them, due to communication challenges, processing needs or delays, illness or a medical condition, sensory sensitivities, or a combination of all the above."

Sessions also complained about the Individualized Education Program, or IEPs, that outline specific goals and accommodations for each student with special needs.  He cited a teacher's letter that IEPs have "become almost contracts with the parents, and schools have to obey them to the letter of the law" or else risk lawsuits.

But they are intended to be a contract, with input from not only the student's parent but also a general education teacher, an administrator, the student's special education teacher and any other specialists the student interacts with, Patterson said.

"What the problem is with that, I have no idea.  It's saying this is what we need to do to give your child what they need to be able to succeed in school," Patterson said.  "Can you be sued if you're not giving the kid what they need?  Yes.  Should you be sued?  Absolutely.  It's the school's job to educate the kids.  If they're not educating them, what are they doing and what are my taxes paying for?"

Des Roches Rosa agreed, pointing out that lawsuits over IEPs occur not because the plans are legally binding themselves but because "parents of kids with disabilities too often have to end up suing school districts in order to get the services that are their legal right under IDEA and FAPE."

A major reason for this, Des Roches Rosa said, is inadequate federal funding to meet students' needs, something Sessions himself noted in his remarks: "We agreed to pay 40% of the cost.  We have never paid more than 15% of the cost.  It has been below 10% in most years."

Patterson agreed that schools lack the funding they need to hire enough staff and to provide the different kinds of evidence-based training and strategies teachers need for effective classroom management.

"We say we're doing all these professional development opportunities, but it’s the same stuff we've been spoon-fed for 15 years that means absolutely nothing at all," she said.  "On both sides, we need not more PD but better quality PD and things that are going to work."

The lack of funding harms not only students but also special education teachers, such as the one in Loveland, Colorado, who filed a lawsuit against the district that let her go after she filed a 20-page police report on various injuries she received from students while on the job.  Sessions refers to similar concerns in his statements but blames these problems on the students—even though the new age of ubiquitous cameras has revealed that special education students risk mistreatment by staff as well.

Just last month, a teacher in Mississippi was caught on video pinning a student with special needs to the floor and then dragging the student across the gym floor by the student's hair.  In another video, she strikes the student on the head with a thermos.

Other videos elsewhere shows an officer beating a special education student in the hall, a teacher in Georgia kneeing a 4-year-old special needs child to the floor and a teacher in Brentwood, New York, physically assaulting a special education student by shoving him, then placing him in a headlock and dragging him out of the hallway.

An investigation at The Seattle Times found 5,000 restraint and seclusion incidents at 10 school districts, "but many of the incidents, at least as they were reported, did not appear to justify the need for restraints or isolation."

Sessions says he believes in public education, but he appears not to believe in "free appropriate public education" for all students based on the remarks he made—even though he would be responsible for enforcing FAPE as U.S. Attorney General.

"Anytime anyone targets special education students as having 'discipline' problems, that is a red flag for me," Des Roches Rosa said.  "If the school is sending home the message to parents that the kids are bad rather than in need of understanding and support, those students are going to spend their entire lives—in the class, and at home—in a state of constant trauma and stress.  That terrifies me."