Struggle To Educate Students With Severe Disabilities

Outstanding story from Sunday's edition of The New York Times that examines the struggles when trying to balance providing students with severe disabilities with academics and practical living skills. There's no simple answer, but perhaps someone would be interested in looking at a YAI model that has our day services program working with the high schools to ease the transition from board of education to adults day services and helps identify the practical skills they will need after high school.


NEW YORK -- Once predominantly isolated in institutions, severely disabled students have been guaranteed a free, appropriate public education like all children since the passage of federal legislation in 1975. In the years since, school districts across the country have struggled to find a balance between instruction in functional skills and academics while providing basic custodial care.
Many have "multiple disabilities," a broad category under the federal Individuals With Disabilities Education Act that refers to children who have at least two disabilities and severe educational needs.
There are 132,000 such students in the United States, out of more than 6.5 million now receiving some kind of special education service at an estimated cost of $74 billion a year.
Students with multiple disabilities can have a wide range of diagnoses, including cerebral palsy, rare genetic disorders and problems that stem from conditions in utero or at birth, some of which have no name.
For many of these students, the post-school future holds day residential programs, nursing facilities or group homes, not college or jobs. The concepts of educational reform and standardized assessment have little meaning for them; they are among the most costly to educate and the least understood.