by Daveed Mandell
About 25 years ago, for better or for worse, Public Law 94-142 irrevocably revolutionized the education of all children with disabilities, including, of course, blind and visually impaired children. In 1976, parents and teachers were jubilant when Congress passed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act. What excited them so much was that henceforth, according to the new law, each child who qualified for special education services because of disability was promised a public school education at his or her neighborhood school in an age-appropriate classroom in the least restrictive environment which could accommodate individualized disability-related educational needs. For the first time, blind students could not be denied attendance in the local public schools. They would no longer be sent to designated schools (often located far from their homes) where there were resource rooms, or to residential schools for the blind. Instead, itinerant teachers would visit the neighborhood schools to oversee their academic courses and teach them the requisite skills and techniques of blindness, such as braille, the use of low vision devices, orientation and mobility and activities of daily living. Back then, schools for the blind, resource classes and state hospitals (for very severely multiply disabled blind children) were still available. Advocates and policy-makers hoped the new law would offer a continuum of options to blind students and their families, according to each particular child’s abilities, aptitudes and needs.
For many years, there had been in this country good, though geographically and numerically inadequate, options for providing superior education to blind children; but there were many children with additional, often severe and multi-faceted disabilities for whom no educational programs of any kind existed. For these children and their families, the passage of P.L. 94-142 was an event of life-altering significance.
In the lives of many of these children, the law continues to provide a liberating experience. They live with their families, board school buses every morning — just like all the other non-disabled students who attend their public schools — participate where possible in community and religious activities, and spend their days in an inclusive environment with age-appropriate peers and expectations. Some question whether these children are receiving an education in the sense that most adults understand that word, but their inclusive educational situation is far superior to the institutionalization and stay-at-home experiences that formerly defined the set of options available to children with the most severe multiple disabilities.
Unfortunately, however, for many students with visual impairments, the mood of jubilation engendered by P.L. 94-142 was short-lived. Fully inclusive education, it turned out, was not the best option for many children who are blind.
Today’s population of children who are blind is significantly different from a more homogenous population comprised mostly of relatively healthy children whose blindness had resulted from retrolental fibroplasia, which was the “norm” in the 1950s and ‘60s. Now, visual impairments have genesis from a number of causes. The number of low-birth-weight babies who survive has increased dramatically, and many of these children have serious disabilities in addition to severe visual impairments. The proportion of blind children whose only disability is blindness is significantly smaller than it once was, and some school systems serve few blind children who are educable in the academic sense of that word.
Soon after passage of Public Law 94-142, the disability rights and independent living movements began to demand “full inclusion” for nearly every single child with a disability. Interpreting the concept of “full inclusion” in the most literal sense of the term had the consequence of requiring all children who qualified for special education services to take all their classes every day with their peers. Such a schedule allows little opportunity to learn skills specific to the management of particular disabilities. Champions of full inclusion pushed to abolish all specialized schools, and insisted that all disabled students should be mainstreamed into regular public school classrooms. These advocates for total inclusion argued that the students’ specific disability-related needs could be met by itinerant specialists who would travel to the various schools and work with both the children and their regular classroom teachers. The past two decades have seen several incarnations of Public Law 94-142, the most recent being the reauthorized P.L. 105-17, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Today, most schools for the blind serve a population comprised mainly of multiply disabled blind children while so-called “normal” blind children attend public schools and rely on itinerant teachers, who are now known as vision specialists and orientation and mobility specialists.
“It’s a raw deal for blind students and their parents and educators,” says Jerry Fields, who has taught blind children for nearly four decades and is immediate past president of the California Council of the Blind’s San Francisco chapter. “Educating blind kids has become a nightmare. Each week, itinerant teachers travel hundreds of miles to work with as many as 40 or 50 kids in as many as 20 schools. That means that most of the specialists barely manage to maintain contact with their charges. If they’re lucky, they may spend an hour or two a week with each child. The net result is that a blind child can experience serious learning difficulties well before the classroom teacher and the vision specialist spot them. How, then, can educators teach kids all the required skills that blind and visually impaired people need to live, learn, play, work and function successfully in society?
“Working with kids is often not the main job of these itinerant teachers. They must advise classroom teachers on how to provide materials for and test a blind child; they talk to nurses about how to do vision screening; they give advice on how to get materials brailled. They consult with specialists about working with multiply disabled children, when visual impairment isn’t the major disability.
“Much of the vision specialist’s time is taken up with endless paperwork, record keeping and assisting with preparation of the Individualized Education Plan (IEP) reports,” Fields bristles. “These teachers are being treated like overpaid clerks or aides.”
Two years ago, Fields taught a class of very severely disabled students, two of whom were blind. He started, in September, with eight students. By the following April, he had 15, with only two aides to assist him. Most class time was spent in either toilet training or diapering the children.
California once had the Cadillac of this country’s special education systems for blind and other disabled kids. “Not anymore,” sighs Fields. “In my opinion, this state now has one of the worst special education programs in the nation.”
The U.S. Department of Education concurs. According to CCB member and special educator Dan Kysor, a recent study commissioned by that department found that California ranks 50th among all the states in its implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
Lately, there has been considerable discussion about reducing class size in public schools. However, the limitation does not apply to special education. Whereas, in California’s public schools, a classroom teacher who works in the first three primary grades can serve a maximum of 20 students, there is no such class-size limit for special education. Teachers must accept all disabled students who live in a particular district.
Since the state master plan was adopted, there have been no specific student-teacher ratios for sensory and mentally disabled children. “Because most blind kids are required to be educated in regular classrooms, they don’t get much special education attention,” Fields says. “It’s hard for many of them, therefore, to cope with adjusting to living as a blind person. In fact, ironically, for many blind children, the public school classroom is the most restrictive environment.”
Of course, a smart kid can use readers, low vision aids, and maybe parental help and may not have much trouble learning. The vision specialist will bring him or her materials in braille, large print or on audio cassette; and the classroom teacher will be responsible for teaching all academic subjects. “However, newly blinded children — or kids who lack drive, creativity, ingenuity and self-confidence or whose parents aren’t strong advocates — will most likely end up with an inferior education. They may occupy seats in a regular classroom, and their teachers may even give them all A’s; yet, one thing is clear: They won’t learn much.
“For blind students, learning involves much more than mere academics. Because they can’t gain information from watching other people, blind kids may have to be taught such simple tasks as finding a dropped object, buttoning a shirt, or eating with a knife and fork. Unfortunately, though, most itinerant teachers don’t have time to plan and teach a detailed curriculum in skills of blindness.”
So, what are blind kids learning nowadays from their teachers? “An oversimplified message,” says Fields. “They are being taught that they are like everyone else. Too late they discover what they have missed — when they approach such issues as dating or looking for a job. Worse still, blind kids are learning that they’re either gifted or stupid. There’s nothing in between.”
Given today’s realities with regard to class size, money, personnel preparation, and frequent lack of parental involvement, what can we in the ACB do to help make significant improvements in the education of blind children?
Fields suggests that we can do quite a lot. “First,” he says, “people must understand the difference between how it was when most blind adults went to school, and what’s going on today. Second, schools for the blind must be responsible for teaching all blind children the skills and techniques of blindness. In fact, they must be for kids what (blindness) orientation centers are for adults. Third, the federal government must be forced to reinstate training programs that provide an adequate number of credentialed teachers to maintain resource rooms throughout the (schools in each) state. Fourth, we need to develop a comprehensive program to educate blind children and their parents and educators about blindness and the potential of blind children and adults. Finally, the American Council of the Blind affiliates must provide many more adult role models for blind children and sponsor occasions for parents and children to interact with these role models.”
The motivations behind the Education for All Handicapped Children Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act were — and continue to be — noble and worthy of celebration. The poor implementation of the laws, especially in terms of poorly understood and overutilized concepts, has been disastrous for many children with disabilities, particularly for children with visual impairments. We in ACB must become involved in the education of the next generations of blind Americans, or the answer to the question, “How will they ever learn?” will be expressed in generations of young adults who cannot function as blind people in a sighted world, who cannot live independently, find meaningful work, or find a place in the leadership of organizations like the ACB.