Multiply Disabled Deaf Students...Hot Potatoes?
Friday November 10, 2006
I have heard complaints before that deaf schools were becoming "dumping grounds" for multiply disabled deaf students. An itinerant teacher I met tonight told me that a school for the deaf she had worked at recently, had experienced growth because local school districts sent deaf students with multiple disabilities to the deaf school. (Allegedly to reduce the local school district's risk of not being able to make Adequate Yearly Progress under No Child Left Behind).
However, when the deaf school got a new principal, this principal decided that the deaf school should be more academic and less focused on teaching functional skills. So this principal had the multiply disabled students evaluated and if (as in the case of a deaf student with mental retardation) deafness was not determined to be the primary disability, the student was sent back to the local school district (which supposedly has the services available but can not provide the deaf multiply disabled student an all ASL environment).
So where can deaf students with multiple disabilities go? If local schools do not want them and if schools for the deaf do not want them either, how can they receive the education and services they are entitled to by law? The itinerant thought that they should be tested differently and not counted towards Adequate Yearly Progress.
Comments
How sad that this happens.
Unfortunately, though, it is not new. Back in the late 1980s, I did a little tutoring with a deaf boy with Downs Syndrome out in California. This boy did not speak yet — he expressed himself only with the few dozen signs that he knew. He could hear some, enough that I think he understood at least some of what people said to him, but did not express himself in speech.
His parents told me that they were having trouble finding a good placement for him. He was basically in a program for children with mental retardation with, I think, inadequate accommodations for his deafness/hearing impairment, including people who did not really sign. They did try to get him into a deaf school, but they evaluated him with the same kind of criteria you mention: they only accepted students whose “primary” disability was deafness and rejected everyone else. And one of the boys they rejected was this boy who expressed himself only in signs! If he did not fit the criteria, then who could?! Maybe it was based on audiograms or something, but if so that was an extremely short sighted way to do it. Audiograms should be only one part of the whole picture.
I am experiencing the same type of thing. I am teaching sign to a family whose daughter has DS and is Deaf. Finding appropriate placement for this child has been almost impossible! She was in an MD class where no one signed, then the parents got her moved to a Deaf class where all the children are way ahead of her. What to do? The school for the deaf wants to take her but can’t due to age restrictions in the class where she could be placed. Arrgh!
Hi My son is deaf, downs. We live in AZ. I drive two hours a day to go to a charter school that will provide and education for him. I could not get the services for his hearing impairment as well, locally. I would love contact. AMY
This is really sad. In South Carolina, there is SC School for the Deaf, Blind, and Multihandicapped. They have different buildings for each category. All deaf schools should that way.
I am a mother first of a 22 year old that was educated at the Kansas School for the Deaf. My son is Deaf, CP and MR. I will say everything was not perfect but he is still bilingual. He can sign but not write academic English. This has given him the tools to use the technology that is happening for the deaf. My son can sign with the viedo relay and hasthe tools to stay home and check in. He could not spell the words but can sign what he needs . The schools have to think out of the box.
These students deserve and have a right to education. The issue that the students primary disability may be MR is more the reason they should be immersed in language. NCLB may leave the teacher behind but let’s not leave the child behind. A happy parent who got what she needed with a fight but well worth it.All Deaf schools are not the same.