Photo: “The Others” by JakezDaniel

For the unitiated, the initials stand for individualized educational plan, and it is the very first step parents go through when attempting to receive services for their child with special needs. Although the event occurred over 30 ago, on the off chance that anyone who was there is still alive I will not mention the name of the school district.

I am telling this story now, although I have told it privately many times since then, because it was a pivotal experience in what was to become almost a lifetime spent devoted to helping children. I was a naive, freshly minted psychologist, just out of graduate school. I was working at a day treatment center in Northridge, California, and one of my clients was due for his annual IEP, the real purpose of which was to determine his continued placement and funding for the upcoming year. My job at the IEP was to present the results of my assessment, which included considerable psychological testing, and make my recommendations to the team.

There were about 8 people at the meeting, including the district’s special ed director, a school psychologist representing the school district, a special ed teacher, the parents, myself, and a few others. After a few other speakers, it was my turn to make my report. I did so, fairly calmly, even though it was my first time. (Although public speaking is the most common phobia, I don’t have a problem with it. It’s private speaking that terrifies me.)

After my presentation, the school district psychologist was called upon to comment. He proceeded to rip into my report, pointing out all the things I did wrong, telling everyone that my data made no sense, that because all my methods were suspicious it could not be trusted to reflect anything having to do with the child, and that it should be completely disregarded.

For some reason I wasn’t offended, but mostly puzzled by his comments. I had received a ridiculous amount of training in testing, and thought I was pretty good at it.

The meeting was long, and the director called for a break. We all went out to the hallway, and the psychologist who tore my report apart asked if I would take a walk with him. We walked a ways down the hall until there was no one in earshot, and he said to me, “There are two things I would like to say to you.”

“Okay.”

“The first thing is that we are not having this conversation. It is important that you understand that.”  It was not the first time I had heard that sentence, and usually it preceded something intriguing, so I agreed.  “The second thing I want to tell you is that that was a damn good report you presented, one of the best I ever read.” That was puzzling to me, so I just nodded, wanting to hear more. He went on to tell me that I did an excellent job, and really wanted me to know that. He added, with kindness in his eyes, “You have to understand, I have a wife and three children. I need this job.”

He didn’t have to say anything else. I knew what he meant, that the political reality of working for the school district required that he lie to keep his job. He had to make the child look as though he didn’t need the intensive services we were giving him, so that the child would come back to the district and ultimately cost them less money.

The school psychologist was trapped, or at least he perceived his reality that way, and I sympathized with him. I understood that that was the world he was working in, and I felt sorry for him. I would not want to work in a job that required me to lie or to compromise my values, and I don’t think he liked it either.

In the years that followed, I attended scores of IEPs, and hated nearly every one of them. I concocted elaborate strategies to avoid them, because with rare exceptions they were kangaroo courts. I preferred instead to encourage parents to hire professional advocates, and tried to work behind the scenes to negotiate the best solutions, solutions that always put the child first, and also recognized the difficult positions school administrators were placed in by their superintendents. Sometimes, those twains never met, but more often the compassionate understanding of the needs of both sides typically went a long way to help children get the services they needed.

The public school special education system in the US is badly broken, and it has been ever since I began working in it.  Children are still routinely denied “free, appropriate” education (in the words of the law), while school district administrators still fear the loss of their jobs for telling the truth. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and its precursors were noble if inadequate attempts at fixing it, but recent legislative changes denuded it further, now making it more difficult than it has been in decades for children to get the education that they deserve.  Yet, persistent, diligent, compassionate effort can and often does work, as it does in nearly every sphere of life.