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Westchester Arc
Herbert Katzenberg Center
121 Westmoreland Avenue
White Plains, NY 10606
(914) 949-9300
info@westchesterarc.org

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Progress and Persisting Stereotypes

A Parent’s Perspective: Leslie Jeris

I am a former Westchester Arc board member and the mother of a seven-year-old daughter with a disability. She spends part of her day in a regular classroom and the other part in a contained classroom, learning either 1:1 or in small groups everything that is too hard for her to understand in the larger classroom. Trying to do work that, at times, is impossible for her to learn in any classroom.

I am often reminded of how far we have come in the 30 years since the first education laws for students with disabilities were enacted. I remember being in fourth or fifth grade and seeing a small group of students with disabilities brought into the school cafeteria after the rest of the students. Everyone stopped to watch them enter and would glance over at their table every so often to stare. This was around 1976–77. Inclusion of these children in regular classrooms was still 30-plus years away.

Flash forward to my recent term on the Westchester Arc board of directors. During that time, I talked to, and heard stories from, the more senior board members who have children with disabilities. I was reminded that their children were turned away at the school doors, not allowed to attend with their siblings, until the first special education legislation was enacted. These parents are my heroes, the ones who came before and forged ahead to make the way better for my daughter, who in 2006 entered the first grade in a partial-day inclusion class with her typical peers.

That said, we still have a lot of work to do. We have to ensure that when special education students enter the classroom—either the regular education classroom or the contained classroom without typical peers—they are being provided a free and appropriate education specifically designed to meet their individual educational needs.

In the Findings and Purpose of the Individuals with Disabilities Act of 2004 (IDEA 2004), Congress identified obstacles to the law’s implementation as being “low expectations, and an insufficient focus on applying replicable research on proven methods of teaching and learning for children with disabilities.”

The law states that its purpose is “to ensure that all children with disabilities have available to them a free appropriate public education that emphasizes special education and related services designed to meet their unique needs and prepare them for further education, employment and independent living” and “to ensure that the rights of children with disabilities and parents of such children are protected.”

The phrase “further education” is new and was specifically written to set higher expectations for our students. I see that the system breaks down in its philosophy of special education and low expectations. We have many educators and administrators who have been in the education system for years, prior to special ed law and inclusion. Our education law has evolved, but the philosophy of special education is still directed by those who may have predetermined expectations of our students and what they can or can not be. We have a lot of work to do to change this philosophy. It is the work of this generation of parents to do this.