Think Different

My son’s recent acceptance at the premiere creative and performance arts high school in Philadelphia inspired this look back down the path that brought us here. This is our story, but I don’t think it’s entirely unique by any means. For good or not, the world is a lot more complex than when we were kids and just went to the reliable neighborhood primary school and high school. For the better part of B’s academic career we paid 5 figure tuitions and battled with a hidebound administration (in his old school) that didn’t have a clue as to how to handle kids like B who are challenged by traditional academics. For years, they ratcheted up a case for warehousing our talented son in even more expensive suburban “special needs schools” that would have taxed our already strained budget and meant hours of grinding commute time each day. It wasn’t just a matter of finances and lifestyle. There were and are deeper principles at stake, namely, what rights we as consumers of the “educational product” are entitled to.

Three main federal laws apply to public schools. These are the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Section 504), and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), passed in 1990. Though the public schools are the most strained and underfunded of all public institutions, they are required to educate every kid to the standards of the state. They may not be able to get the funds they need for more than basic programs, but they are mandated to take on all comers unless they pose a hazard to the school and even then, they are required to accommodate as best they can.

What legal protections exist for private school students? The answer is virtually none. Unless they accept federal funds, private schools are kinda like the Boy Scouts. You have the right to pay the tuition. They have carte blanche to discriminate or select as they see fit. You have the right to suck it up and move on if they feel your kid isn’t a “good fit.”

For 5 years, we were told that B’s “differences” put him in “academic jeopardy” and made him incompatible with the school he was enrolled in. They implied that we were less than intelligent or responsible parents if we didn’t understand this. The other argument, the most specious in my opinion, was that with their 15/1 student teacher ratio, learning specialists, state-of-the-art libraries, media labs and rich endowment, that this poor beleaguered institution wasn’t “set up” to meet the educational demands of special needs kids. That it wouldn’t be fair to the other children. When I tell this to public school educators, they roll their eyes and laugh derisively. Still, most private school parents when confronted with the case against their child’s continued inclusion swallow their disappointment, take the hint and pull their kids out. Who can blame them? But we didn’t do this. Why? Because we understand our son and we saw the flipside far better than they did.

The flipside was that B loved his school. He was fortunate to be mentored by a handful of inspired teachers (mostly in the arts) who “got him” and we credit these creative educators for their independent role in his success. From his perspective, his experience was far more positive than negative. He worked very hard, learned a lot, had fun, had a flawless behavior record and maintained an overall 3.0 GPA. He and we cherished the close society of his friends, most of whom he’s known since kindergarten.

We count as one of our greatest successes that we were able to mitigate the pressure so that he was largely unaware of it. He never knew that his former academic advisor, a horrid little witch of a teacher who stood over him in her own words “for ten minutes, timing him with a stopwatch while he fumbled to open his locker” was making a value judgment against him. He never knew about the stunningly arrogant music teacher who wrote that B “lacked the mental ability” to focus on his course. He never met the abrasive “school psychologist” whose opinions the administrators leaned so heavily on, though she was in fact was unqualified to evaluate him because she was only a sociologist by credential. Even so, judging from her age and backward attitudes, it’s likely that said educational credentials were gained some time before the Sputnik launch. From my discussions with other parents, it became clear that her sole raison d’être at the school was to weed out the “different ones.” For four years, we sat across the table from this hatchet woman until I put my foot down and refused any meeting that she attended. We got so much more done without her.

Believe you me, I came to those meetings with much more than parental emotions in tow. I presented research results on the efficacy of mainstreaming mildly learning challenged kids. I developed an individualized education plan with help and ideas from educator siblings and friends. Kara and I read and worked at times on a daily basis with the teachers we knew we could count on to track B’s progress and challenges. We also spent several European vacations worth of funds on private tutors, private evaluators and private testing because the private school “psychologist” convinced us that we wouldn’t find adequate resources in the public sector.

Yet every year, for four years, it was as if the private school had purged our son’s details from their institutional memory banks. Every year, we started afresh at an end-of-first term meeting in which B’s academic challenges were detailed with dire predictions about his ability to make the grade and manage emotionally. Always reactive – never proactive. Every year, we’d all buckle down, engage the accommodations and B’s grades would rise across the board. Several times every year, I’d do a reality check and ask him if he was happy with his school. Every year he said he loved it and was willing to do the work to stay there. With that his mother and I vowed he could go there as long as he wanted. And that is the reason, more than any other that we dug our heels in. In the process, we learned new definitions for perseverance, academic success and hard work. These are lessons they don’t teach you in school, lessons learned from our own son.

We worked tirelessly within the system. We challenged, lobbied and cajoled the people on the other end of the table. We tested B privately when they said we needed to. We visited the special needs schools we knew we couldn’t afford. We paid for expensive tutoring. But we were prepared to go further, much, much further. By this, I mean the following. I reasoned that if the private school in using public school bussing was in fact accepting federal aid directly or indirectly, that one or more of the federal or state mandated inclusiveness statutes might apply to them. I was one phone call away from testing that assumption and discovering if we could turn this tiny bit of leverage into a court case to test our rights. I guess we’re all fortunate that it never got that far.

The turning point came in late 2006, 7th grade, when I sat in the middle school director’s office and she told me that she had “no vested interest in helping B enroll in any other high school than their own.” This was the very same administrator who in this and many prior meetings had told us that B was not ideally suited to her school. I told her that I was grateful for her candor (chillingly Catch 22 though it was). That night Kara and I went into emergency session. The open enrollment period for out of neighborhood public schools had lapsed three months prior, but through an incredible stroke of luck or vigilance, I learned that our neighborhood association was holding a “Schools Night.” So, on that raw, rain-soaked December night, we buttonholed a Philadelphia School District official who listened sympathetically to (a much abbreviated version of) our tale and committed to working with us. I don’t know what strings she pulled if any, but through her ministrations, we were able to enroll B in the highly-sought-after William Meredith School, where for the first time, school administrators worked in concert with us, rather than at odds. Words hardly express what a revelation and relief it has been, but I can tell you that our experience this school year has turned all the private school “experts’” stereotypes about the public sector on their ear.

For many years, we’d been asked why we chose this uphill path for so long, rather than accept the recommendations of “the experts.” The answer was simple. The experts, in this case were wrong and short-sighted. If a child is an artist/scholar, musician/scholar, athlete/scholar, entrepreneur/scholar or a computer whiz/scholar or is gifted or challenged in any way that diverges from the scholastic norm, then chances are that the experts just don’t get them. Advocating for your child and charting the right course is then left to entirely to parents and guardians who have to make difficult, incredibly important decisions, with little guidance from the traditional academic community. I think they expect you to fail. In fact, I think they rely on it. I look forward to the day when the academic communities in private and in public schools learn to truly embrace inclusiveness and scholastic diversity. In B’s old private school, which touts its diversity, it became clear that they really meant inclusiveness and diversity in a very specific, narrow range. We found it curious that this diversity never included a single blind, deaf or physically disabled kid. Some day, some family with a fire in its collective belly is going to take on a private school in a court of law and challenge and prevail on just these issues.

It makes you wonder why private schools, while selling their inclusiveness, apply it with such aggressive selectivity. Perhaps that too is a marketing decision, as if word got out that a mainstream private school truly caters to special needs they might be inundated with applications from less “desirable” applicants. Is it overly cynical to suggest that the marketing image of inclusiveness trumps the reality of inclusiveness?

We’ve also learned that different sectors have vastly different understandings of what it means to be “special needs.” This year, Kara and I have seen a stark contrast between what “special needs” means in private schools versus public schools. If the Philadelphia Inquirer is to believed, In the public schools sadly, “special needs” is often synonymous with disruption and discipline problems. It seems unlikely that B, if he’d been enrolled in a public school from the start, would have ever been flagged for his mild but real special learning needs. In private schools, special needs means everybody who does not fit within their narrow beam. Both are failed models.

My take is that ALL OF US, all learners have “special needs.” If you take that statement to its logical conclusion, it means up-ending the cookie cutter approach to education and truly addressing the special needs of every individual, whatever their abilities and talents. You only have to look at U.S. science, math and literacy test comparisons with other advanced cultures to see that the traditional American model is failing even the traditional scholars. The failure is wide and systemic, a failure in particular, of our baby boomer generation, who may have started out “thinking different” but quickly lapsed into familiar rubrics perhaps because we are distracted by the political exigencies of four decades of fruitless, arrogant petroleum cowboy diplomacy. I’m waiting for a politician, a presidential candidate to point this out and then detail the vision for overhauling both our education infrastructure and our roads and bridges. Republican, Democrat or Independent, that’s the person who will get my zealous support. I’m not holding my breath. I’ve not seen any of the current field with the courage, honesty or zealotry to tackle these, the truly most important infrastructure issues we face as we pass on our legacy to the next generation.

From my perspective in the adult e-learning business, I sense that an educational revolution is at hand. There are technology and training solutions coming down the pike that will make fundamental differences. Communications tools are coming to the forefront that are creating economically viable, scalable, customized lifelong education for everybody who needs it. Embracing “universal special needs” will drive a true revolution in education. But first, I think it will involve an overhaul in the base premise, in leadership, in thinking, in educational modeling. God, I hope it happens soon. Two hundred years ago, a teenager like B would have left a traditional academic environment and been engaged as an apprentice by a master artist or craftsman. It’s clear that something was lost when our culture shifted from the apprentice/mentor model to the industrial age model of education where centuries later, we’re still stuck. Perhaps five years from now, parents and students will have more choices, more information and more flexible and creative solutions from the academic world. By that point, the Weiss family will be embroiled in the next great challenge of engaging a higher education system that seems to have largely distanced itself from its legacy commitment to the learning needs of the middle class.

Plenty of parents and students face issues similar to ours. Our story has a happy ending so far. At the end of a lot of hard work, independent research and tireless advocacy, our talented artist/scholar will receive the academic training and creative mentoring that he merits. Looking back on our experiences, we can find no regrets, no false steps or do-overs. Well, maybe we could have saved several thousand bucks, had we learned sooner to recognize and distrust the most patently self-serving advice we were given. Ours is the luck born of hard work. If there is a single lesson to be distilled from our experience, it’s that when it comes to education, “challenging authority” and “thinking different” aren’t just shopworn boomer bromides, but life skills that we and our children will need to succeed in a world that no longer regards us as the last word. How can America regain its academic pre-eminence? Engaging a concept like universal special needs might just be the answer.