The Education Blame Game

In a few weeks, I will make a formal effort to get my currently "special needs" kid booted from the system. In a sea of parents trying to get help for their kids, this may come as a surprise. What came as a surprise to me was learning that, because my child was deemed in need of OT for his poor fine motor skills (specifically handwriting, from an educational perspective), he was only attending a minority of his math lessons. To me, pulling a child from something as basic as math because his handwriting sucks - especially given that he will write nearly all of his academic work from middle school onward - is bass-ackwards.

So, color me skeptical, but I tend to assume that behind every beaurocratic bass-ackwards choice, there is someone playing a game. Most of the upper level beaurocrats I've met are not actually stupid. So I went looking for an answer... why would an intelligent white kid from an involved, educated middle class household be classified as special ed for seemingly silly reasons?
The resounding answer: it's my fault. Every place I looked, I saw articles about how involved, middle class white parents are gaming the system, getting their kids classified in order to obtain better service. The process was blamed on parents who know how to "advocate for" their kids. Excuse me?? First of all, since when did "advocating" for your kid become a bad thing? Last I check, schools were bemoaning parental lack of involvement. Their job was impossible until parents took a role. Oh, but wait... it's now equally bad to get involved! Second, and more importantly, the schools' response to "advocating" is on them... not me.

I did advocate for my kid. He was alternating between being tormented on the playground, and languishing in the principal's office, mainly because he lacks his peers' keen power of manipulation. They know when to poke and when to kiss up, and he never gets it. Also, in the classroom, his fine motor skills did impact his ability to handwrite answers, so he was constantly getting docked points for things he knew, in every subject. Within a single year, his self-image was in the toilet. So, yeah, we "advocated." The school's answer, their only answer, was to label my son disabled. I never, never advocated for that. I advocated for them to a) get control of their playgrounds, and that meant the sneaky, cruel ones as well as the clueless, clumsy ones. I advocated for them to come up with a way for him to show what he knows, despite his handwriting, so that he might have some shred of self-confidence with which to try to tackle elementary school. I did not then, nor do I now, advocate for him being classified as "disabled."

Want my opinion? Sorry, it's my blog, so you have no choice. I know the budget's tight. I know it is a matter of white privilege that I can and do advocate for my kid. But I refuse to hold the whole bag, here. When we first walked into that meeting 4 years ago, knowing very little about the educational system, it was clearly spelled out to us that the only way the school would do anything different, anything potentially difficult, was if we signed on the line to have him classified. We asked - directly - if the principal could make the para's who "supervise" recess do something crazy like, say, leave the wall they lean against and circulate. We asked if  we went out and bought a cheap laptop, could he type his assignments. We asked to brainstorm solutions. The answer, with big smiles, was Suuuure!!!!... if we have him classified.

So we can totally have this conversation about "gaming the system," but I'm not drinking that Kool Aide. This school system works for tips, and it gets them through classifying kids.

So here's the new plan. We're declassifying him, so that he can go to fucking math class. And you know I'm still going to be there, "advocating for" my kid. I'm just not going to sign the papers this time. This time, you have to educate you, you have to find a valid and effective way to teach him and assess him, and you have to manage the behavior of all your charges, and you have to do it for only the price I already paid for his education in my taxes. Because I'm no longer going to sell his self-identity as a whole and intelligent boy in order to make your job easier.

Strategic communication and eating crow

I am writing here, mainly just to process what I've been thinking about lately. Today's topic is PR and the relationship to fallability and humility. Not long ago, there were two incidents in my town which were thought to be child abductions at school bus stops. One was not, and another was a "concerning" incident but likely not a true abduction attempt. All the same, they prompted the usual flurry of frantic parents and resulting strategic & safety communication from the school and civic authorities.

For me, this reopened old wounds. Last year, three times in one month, my children's school bus left without them. This was during a time of flux for us. Chris was taking odd jobs, and the kids' pick up & child care schedules varied. But this is not a unique scenario, we followed all existing protocols, and still mistakes happened. Somebody goofed up, and the kids were left at the school with no official supervision. Fortunately, it is a small, tight-knit school. The kids were noticed quickly, I was contacted by another parent, and my children were kept safe until I could get there. All the same, as a mother I can't easily forget all the ways this could've gone so very, very badly. What if the kids had tried to walk home and gotten lost? What if they were noticed by someone with evil motivations (scared, unsupervised kids are easy to spot) rather than the trusted family friend who caught them? What if they had gotten hurt, while in this limbo? Remember, the kids fell outside the safety net. The school had "dismissed" them, but had not transported them, creating a kind of procedural no-man's land where they were at school, and yet not. No one was accountable.

My kids were safe by luck, by familiarity within the school community, by good fortune, etc. But they were not officially safe. Something went very wrong, from the school's perspective. And this brings me to my issue... what really chafes me, what makes me toss and turn at night, and makes me see red, is not that this mistake happened. It was a complicated time, and while that doesn't excuse the serious mistake, I am human and so can understand that others are human, too. I can accept that a mistake happened. The grudge I've been unable to release is that I was never contacted by any school personnel, ever. The parent who took my kids home called me. The teachers didn't. The receptionist didn't. The principal, whom I called that first evening (pretty irate, I must say), didn't call me back until late the next day, at which point she left a message which I promptly returned but then she didn't call back again. The same thing happened three times, remember, and each time there were school personnel around who saw it, but none ever contacted me.

I would think that, if ever there was a call you are sure to make, "we misplaced your children but they're ok" would be that call. I do understand that noone ever wants to be vulnerable. I get that it may seem poor strategy to call and cop to a grievous error, unbidden. True, it may set you up for a lawsuit. But here's the thing... the actions set you up for the consequences, not the admission of them. I mean, seriously, what are the odds that I would not learn you forgot my children? These things do come out. By not being forthright, by not having a person with some power and responsibility call me and admit it, the result is that I do not trust the school. I do not trust that institution. Not because a mistake could happen, but because my children could be put in serious harm and I can't trust that anyone would tell me so that I can handle it, so that I can be there for scared kids in the way I needed to be.

I don't know what I want. I don't know what will make me trust the school, or if I ever will. Frankly, that bridge may be out for good. I see that procedural changes are happening, and I applaud them, but trust? Trust isn't always rational. What I want, more than anything, is to emphasize that structures in charge of children need to be willing to eat crow if they've messed up. They need to take that risk and admit it. Because the alternative is a lack of trust, without which we cannot be of one community.