THE ONCE COMMON SCHOOL AND ITS FUTURE STUDENTS

Reserved powers

The influence of the state on education has always been an issue in American society from colonial times up to the present (Glenn, 1988). The questions raised are often about what purposes does state control have (Spring, 1989) but also about how effective state control is (Hunt, 1975). It has been argued that what government control does exist is inept and incomplete on the local, state, and federal levels. Local control is usually in the hands of locally elected school boards composed of business people, lawyers, housewives, doctors, clergymen and a few others. They are generally conservative on social and economic issues and mostly attempt to employ administrative and teaching staffs which are equally conservative.

Of all agencies devised by Americans for the guiding of their public affairs, few are as vague in function as the school board, fewer still take office in such resounding apathy - and none other, ironically, is capable of stirring up the passions of a community to so fine a froth (p.3).

(Bendiner, 1969)

Fifteen years ago, it seemed that state control of education was anachronistic and destined to disappear, leaving schools open to the influence of pressure groups of vigilantes who operated on the local level. Hunt (1975) quoted Koerner (1968) on state departments of education saying

...whatever their size and powers, almost without exception they are ill-equipped to carry out their duties, and they command no great respect from the school systems of their states (p91).

Although beginning to assume leadership roles in curriculum research, teacher education, and reform in basic and higher education, it was still "impossible to believe that highly imaginative leadership could emerge from such departments" or that the little long range planning that did occur at the state level would not be reversed with a change in political administration (Hunt, 1975, p504). Federal leadership if not control was also rather ephemeral featuring, as it did, changes in the role of the federal government with each change in the political composition of the Congress and the Presidency. No effective leadership and only unpredictable and sporadic funding could be expected from the federal level for teachers and administrators attempting to produce a citizenry capable of preserving democracy (Hunt, 1975, p506).

Katz (1971) had argued that the early political leaders of the United States did not really want public education to foster democratic values or to develop informal political participation. As merchants and businessmen, they wanted universal, free, compulsory training to produce a large, docile working class which could be complacently employed in the factories of the Industrial Revolution. It would also Americanize immigrants and their children and preserve the status quo of the class system and its inherent racism. An impersonal, implacable bureaucracy was created to enforce the mandatory, state controlled machinery of education. This revisionist or neo-Marxist view was criticized for its overemphasis on the socioeconomic dialectic of class struggle and inevitable conflict (Butts, 1973).

Workers and citizens

The common school was not promoted to develop willing workers for capitalist entrepreneurs, property owners, and industrialists, because factories needed only willing workers, not educated workers. The common school or public school, in distinction to private or church schools, sought to promote common national attitudes, loyalties, and values in order to shape a shared national identity under the direction of the central authority of the government. It was meant to prevent the republic from stratifying into permanent social and economic classes or from blowing apart in ethnic or socio-economic strife.

Public education through the common school was promoted by an emerging class of American thinkers and doers who became prominent in the urban centers of the early United States, people such as lawyers, clergymen, journalists, and assorted crusaders and reformers (Glenn, 1988). The "moral reform" movement of the time, stimulated primarily by the evangelical churches, was a reaction to the apparent decay of social order in the growing industrial cities, featuring crime, depravity, and lawless children roaming the streets (Boyer, 1978).

However, while the inculcation of attitudes of passivity and subordination in future employees might have influenced some calls for school reform (Bowles and Gintis, 1976) and the indoctrination of uplifting moral values may have stimulated others (Schultz, 1973), the manifest purpose of reformers like Horace Mann was to homogenize the disparate ethnic, social, and linguistic groups pouring into the cities of the young republic into a common cultural and national identity. Molding future citizens in a common template would produce a unified, harmonious cultural system with shared values and outlook and prevent the fragmentation and strife over political, social, and religious issues that had shattered other nations.

The common school was intended, by its proponents, above all as the instrumentality by which the particularities of localism and religious tradition and (in the United States) of national origin would be integrated into a single sustaining identity (p.9).

(Glenn, 1988)

What forces actually control the schools and what forces actually direct reform are crucial questions that often have surprising answers and unlooked for results. The recurrent theme of contemporary educational reform is the belief that educational changes that lead to greater economic productivity and competitiveness in an increasingly global economic system are those that must be implemented and are demanded by the "Excellence in Education" movement.

Many of these calls are justified by research on the educational programs of countries like Japan and West Germany which have begun to compete successfully with the United States in a variety of areas. School districts and state departments of education have combined to make schooling more academically oriented by mandating increased standards for teacher certification and high school graduation, longer school days and school years, testing with standardized achievement tests, and the publication of the results.

This conventional wisdom may be misguided and the "human capital" and "modernization theory" used to justify the assumption that more or better schooling leads to greater productivity which then inevitably leads to better material and social life may not be true. Although school reformers may have loftier ideals, political and economic trends in the private sector are frequently "the primary determinants of pedagogical relationships in the classroom" and have historically driven the movement toward reform as well as selected its direction in the United States (De Young, 1989).The current reform movement has allowed business to blame education for its own mistakes and to offer assistance to education at the cost of "accountability" to business.

The escalation of education as a major business concern is driven by determined self interest, not charity. The education crisis has motivated business not only to devote more money, time and talent to improving public education but to demand more accountability from local school systems in return for valuable assistance.

(Bader, 1986)

The business of education

Educational innovation was systematically linked to economic development and social progress in previous eras. It was designed to produce good moral character and habits. These were presumed would become either good business practices or good workers' habits. The common school experience would ensure political participation and democratic values among the disparate groups of the American public. Now, at the end of the twentieth century, social scientists have linked economic development to social progress and modernization.

Objective decisions concerning profits and efficiency in the private sector are expected to yield significant, if very gradual, social and personal advances. The function of education then, is supposedly to continue the process of educational development for the purposes of economic productivity which will lead to the improvement of individual standards of living and positive social progress.

School reforms now raise fewer concerns and questions about democracy, morality and inequality, and concentrate on the adjustment of education to the needs of the corporate and business interests of the private sector. Like the former Soviet Union which conservative business people despised for its collective consciousness and lack of individual initiative, the United States is said by these same people to be educating its children primarily for the economic good of the nation and for their contribution to the global struggle for economic dominance.

Borrowing from contemporary human capital theory, advocates of using the school to better prepare our "human resources" (i.e., children) declare that more specific attention needs to be given to the "productive" rather than "consumptive" possibilities of schooling. By making our schools more rigorous, it is argued, we will enhance both our national economy and the material and social lives of our children. This will occur because more productive workers mean a more productive economy, and a more productive economy means a higher standard of living for all our citizens (p.165).

(De Young, 1989)

The national reports on education have echoed the claims of business leaders that one of the major causes of the economic problems in the U.S. and of America's increasing difficulty in competing in the global marketplace is the decline of American education. Business has been hamstrung by the difficulty in finding well educated or even trainable workers and is having to spend huge amounts on educating its workers because the schools are not doing it. The Conference Board, an international business network (Bader, 1987), complained about the American deficit in human potential as well as trade deficits and budget deficits. Lee Iacocca is often quoted as saying that if someone cannot compete in the classroom at age ten, then he will not be able to compete in the workplace at age 30. The connection between the nation's economic needs and education is made explicit.

The growing emphasis on education reflects a widespread belief that the quality of U.S. education has dire economic consequences. Many industries are already experiencing shortages of adequately trained workers...Some shortages are due to lowered birth rates,, but the availability of young people to fill entry level jobs is limited by a high dropout rate and by too many schools graduating poorly prepared students (p.70).

(The Conference Board, 1987)

The ministry for the propagation of the faith

Economic and business interests are only some of the forces that feel a need to use the schools for their own purposes. The nineteenth century supporters of democratic ideology thought that common public schools would provide the citizenry with the knowledge and motivation for political action and participation. Government controlled schools can be a double edged sword, however, with education and training on one side and propaganda and indoctrination on the dark side.

Schools can provide the knowledge and ability to protect and advance civil rights. They can be, and often are, ministries of propaganda and institutions of enslavement used to control behavior and ideas and to enforce political and ideological conformity. The basic question surrounding the publicly financed common school and its reform then, is whether or not education should be open to control by successions of interest groups.

As long as education is tied to government support and its political structure favors certain groups over others, education will serve the needs of those with the most political power... In the United States, this means that schools will continue to primarily serve the interests of the business community, on a reform-crisis cycle... Differing political groups will constantly call on schools to meet their needs (p.185).

(Spring, 1989)

The possible solution to these problems might be to resolve the issue of free access to knowledge in the schools without undue governmental influence regardless of whether liberals or conservatives happened to be politically dominant at the moment. Liberal and conservative views highly influenced the attempts at educational reform from the 1960's through the 1980's. Whether partisan politics continue to determine the course of reform in the national education system remains to be seen as the "crisis" in education continues into the 90's and another Administration in Washington begins to paw the school system to find a handle on its problems.

After twelve years of conservative educational policies a new direction for education reform could be good or simply another twist in a meandering trail of feckless wandering in the wilderness. Liberal fears of the right wing's communist witch hunting in the 1960's and of the apparent anti-intellectualism in American schools led to the identification of the professional educator as the culprit in the perceived decline in American schools (Spring, 1989, p. 10-24). The solutions to these problems were improved curricula based on "modern" psychological theory or behaviorism, federal aid to the disadvantaged, and federal laws ensuring equality of opportunity. A few liberal reforms worked and most did not. Some worked a little but at high cost, or others were not allowed to work.

Incompetent totalitarians

The "conservative restoration" following the years of Kennedy and Johnson also deplored the decline of American schools in the late 60's and early 70's, but blamed it on the capitulation of school authorities to students' demands for "relevance" in their education and to the increasing demands for equal opportunity and access to education by minorities, females, and the handicapped. The conservative solutions for these problems were raised academic standards, a "get tough" attitude toward discipline problems, and a "feasible" approach to equality of opportunity.

The business or economics view of education perceives a "productivity crisis" in the schools. While protesting that this is not the "time and motion study" mentality of Taylorism and the factory efficiency model of education, Doyle (1993) suggests that "schools must learn to do more with less," just like American businesses. They have to develop the "most efficient deployment of resources in the most effective work environment." He complains that the schools do not have a way to deal with students who are unmotivated "workers." They have to start using a form of accountability called "benchmarking" that works by "Making students workers and teachers managers of instruction. Using administrators as facilitators and superintendants as choreographers instead of autocrats (Doyle, 1993)."

This conservative solution still sounds like Taylorism with a new vocabulary. Deming, who helped invent the current business reform model of Total Quality Management, specifically rejected the kind of thinking that went into Management by Objectives, another business management model (Holt, 1993). It seems that no matter how a business reform model starts out, it eventually degenerates into a new version of factory efficiency, time and motion, or Taylorism. When the updated version of business reform is imposed on education, it reinforces the behaviorist view of administrators. The same thinking that underlies Management by Objectives underlies "outcome based education," mastery learning, and competency testing. "Outcome based education" is another crude form of behavioristic accountability and

...behind the high-stepping OBE jargon of transformational outcomes, learning paradigms, and empowerment lurk behavioristic methods that are totally at odds with the Deming quest for quality.

(Holt, 1993)

Today, another conservative solution is to glut the regular classroom with more and more students who are more and more needy in services. When the middle class parents find this unacceptable, and they already are bitterly complaining about the shortcomings of the regular classroom, they will want to leave. With "school choice" and tuition vouchers they have the means to leave the public schools. Only middle class families have a reasonable chance of being able to take the most advantage of the school choice policies.

When the middle class decides to spend public tax money supporting private schools, the structure and function of the common public school will have been changed radically and permanently. An undesirable side effect would be the lose of the function of the common school as a communal introduction to the values of democracy. Private schools based on religious dogma, political doctrine, and social status would help to stratify American society and stagnate the social mobility that has historically characterized it.

The assumption made by a system of government operated schools is "that an institution or group of people should have the power to model the character of future citizens .. that political power, as embodied in government, should determine the character, values, and knowledge of citizens" (Spring, 1989, p. 184). Failure to examine this basic assumption leads to the trap of wasting energy considering reforms that have no hope of being implemented. The "dream of teacher and student empowerment has little hope under the present political control of schools" because no government can allow its education system to empower its students to make real changes in the political and economic structure of its society.

No government will knowingly train its citizens to overthrow it, according to leftist critics of the public school system. In continuing to use government controlled common schools to develop the minds of its future citizens, American society continues to run the risk of institutionalizing one of the most effective means of totalitarian control (Spring, 1989, p. 185). That risk however is very small, if the schools are as ineffective implementing totalitarian control as they are in teaching mathematics. Nonetheless, the point is that changing political views often have too much influence on an institution which has such a vital, and ideally nonpartisan, objective; educating the succeeding generations of

American citizens.

FUTURE STUDENTS

No more white bread, just shades of rye

Because of an aging white population and an increased proportion of poor, disadvantaged, handicapped, and minority children in the public schools, the institution of education is going to require an exceptionally skilled teaching profession by the year 2000 (Hodgkinson, 1988). Whites will compose a smaller percentage of the general population and a much smaller percentage of school age children. The white Baby Boomers have deferred child bearing until recently and will start to retire after the year 2000 when the oldest of them will turn 55. Whites will still compose a large proportion of the teacher corps, but it will be an aging majority and there will be a chronic shortage of teachers from minority groups.

The success of the social programs of the 1960's allowed energetic and bright individuals to get jobs, leave the ghetto, and join the middle class. These black, Asian, and Hispanic achievers do not consider public school teaching an acceptable career. Meanwhile, the aging white faculty will begin retiring and they will be replaced by the then current crop of too-few education graduates. The availability of new teachers will depend on the working conditions and salaries which are then available in teaching compared to other professions. By 2000, one out of three Americans will be non-white. In many urban areas of the United States, whites are already a numerical minority.

In a few short years, the children that are going to be coming to the public schools are going to show a marked increase in being 1) poor, 2) non-English speaking, 3) handicapped, 4) and having a new level of cultural, social and ethnic pluralism. At the same time, the schools are trying to tighten educational standards and de-emphasize programs for exceptional students. Of all children in the U.S., 24% are now below the poverty line and 17% of school age children are below the poverty line.

Only 7% of U.S. households now consist of two adults and two children, contrary to the venerable stereotype. Increased family instability and medical advances that allow more babies to survive early traumas have contributed to increased diagnoses of physical, emotional, and behavioral handicaps in school age children. The changes in ethnic distribution will be dramatic, with Asians increasing by 65% and Hispanics by 44% (Hodgkinson, 1991). These children are increasingly less likely to assimilate into American culture rapidly. The Hispanic and Southeast Asian children who are entering the U.S. and being born here are not becoming acculurated the way previous immigrants did and they will not learn English even by the second generation (Figueroa & Amato, 1990).

Because the school population will be so different in the near future, teachers will need specific, professional training to handle the diversity. The older cohorts of teachers and their young replacements have already found that "cookbook" teaching and curricula are inadequate (Hodgkinson, 1988). In terms of minority enrollments and availability of minority teachers, "things are worse than the most informed educators have envisioned (AACTE, 1988)."

By 2000 minority student enrollment in the public schools will be 33%, by 2020, 39%. In some geographic areas, the population will be 50% minority. By 2000, teachers will be 78% white, 9.4% Hispanic, and 8.5% black. The magnitude of the coming demographic changes which will result in the increased diversity of the student body means that one third of the children born in 1992 are at risk for school failure (Hodgkinson, 1993; 1992) .There could be millions of children in K-12 with limited English skills while less than 1% of teachers are specializing in bilingual education. The testing of teachers that prevents otherwise well qualified minority candidates from getting certified will start to have an effect (Smith, 1989).

Baby Boomlets

The Census Bureau reports that there will be no repeat Baby Boom even when the Baby Boomers have their children. The Baby Boom women are having only two children and many of them, 14-17%, are remaining childless. The white middle class is not going to replace itself because social and economic changes have caused the birth rate among the white middle class to drop. The additional teachers, scientists, engineers, and other professionals who are going to be needed are going to have to come from among the under-represented groups.

Currently, the attrition rate from first year to a bachelor's in four years is 32% for all freshman, but 56% for Hispanics and 70% for blacks (Manpower Commission, 1987). In 1987, out of 4,000 doctorates in math, engineering, and the physical sciences, 1% went to blacks and 2% to Hispanics (NSF, 1988). In 1988, out of 800 doctorates in math, 4 went to blacks and 5 to Hispanics (NAMS, 1988). By 2000, 85% of the entrants to the work force will be minorities and women, as well as increased numbers of the disabled. American education needs repairs at every level from prekindergarten to graduate school to yield a larger and more diverse group of scientists and technologists.

Until now the role of minorities, women, and people with disabilities in science and engineering has been widely seen only as an equity issue rather than as the key to future national strength in science and technology.

(Task Force, 1988)

While more college freshmen are interested in teaching, they are only enough to meet one half of the current demand (Astin et al, 1987). Eventually, a teacher shortage is guaranteed by the 200,000 vacancies that occur yearly and which can only partially be filled by new graduates (Darling-Hammond, 1987). Testing of prospective teachers has prevented at least 38,000 minority candidates from entering teaching from 1984 to 1989. Data from 19 states show that the multiple choice teacher competency tests have

"disproportionately eliminated minorities as prospective teachers" (Smith, 1989). Minority students are likely to attend segregated schools, are more likely to be poor, and to face unemployment. Enlarging the pool of minority teachers "may be the central challenge we'll face in the next decade" because it is "unthinkable that these trends can be reversed without a broader pool of minority teachers"

(Smith, 1989).

SCHOOLS OR JAILS

Pay or play

Hodgkinson (1991) has developed some interesting statistics showing the relationship between education and crime in the United States. More than 80% of jail inmates are high school dropouts, each prisoner costs over $20,000 per year to maintain, and 63% of released convicts are back in jail for additional crimes within three years. Prison inmates are the most expensive tax-supported individuals in the nation. It costs about $3,300 in tax money to support a college student. In Pennsylvania for instance, it is seven times more expensive to keep someone in the state penitentiary than at Penn State. States that have the lowest high school dropout rates have the lowest jail rates and states that have the highest dropout rates also have the highest jail rates. Apparently, states prepare certain of their citizens for jail by encouraging them to drop out of high school.

The jail population in the U.S. doubled in the last decade while the general population increased only incrementally. The U.S. incarceration rate is the highest in the world, nicely ahead of the former Soviet Union, which thinks it is experiencing a crime wave. The Republic of South Africa uses prison as a control for social unrest but in 1988, an American black male had five times more chance of being in jail than a South African black male. The United States spends only 4.1% of its GNP on education which is considerably less than most other industrialized nations and the children of the United States are more at-risk in several health and education areas than children in many developing nations (Hodgkinson, 1991).

State governors are cutting social programs and building jails as fast as they can in order to claim status as tough "law and order" officials with a "no nonsense" approach to the growth of crime, drug abuse, and chronic poverty. With continued declines in state tax revenues and a relentlessly rising crime rate, governors and legislators have had to make difficult choices about which programs to cut and which programs to continue and to increase. Although cutting social welfare programs becomes one of the inevitable practices to save money and is relatively easy because the poor and the needy do not have a powerful lobby, it is an exercise in a short term solution to a perpetual problem.

It is ultimately futile and self-defeating because many of these poor people will be served eventually, whether cheaply in a welfare program or expensively as criminals and prisoners. Prisons are the fastest growing "social service" and funding for prisons is the fastest growing cost of social services, including health and education. Of course, as everyone has noticed, new prisons and more prison cells do not discourage crime. The problem continues to grow with no solution in sight.

Education has been shown to decrease the desirability of a life of crime. Increased education leads to increased earnings and, as an individual earns more money and gains more of the benefits of the American mainstream, the risks and hazards of criminal activity appear less and less inviting. However, governors are not likely to decrease funding for jails while increasing funding for education any time soon. The public need for a "quick fix" for the crime problem will not result in long term efforts to solve the problem with more funding for Head Start or educational reforms (Hodgkinson, 1991). People who cannot find or keep jobs wind up on the welfare rolls or in the criminal justice system.

Partly to avoid accepting blame for their own incompetent management, business leaders have blamed education for the troubles of the American economy from the beginning of the current education "crisis" up to the moment. The Southpost Institute for Policy Analysis (1992) reports that small businesses in America which account for 57% of the work force employ 10 million people who have problems with writing, reading, and math and that they are "a serious barrier to economic gains." One half of the 5 million small businesses complain that 40% of their workers have difficulties with basic skills. They cannot read instructions, give change, or understand verbal instructions.

The National Center on Education and the Economy grumbles that U.S. companies have to spend $30 billion annually on employee training. However, a 1991 survey by the Olsten Corporation, which supplies temporary employees to business, found that most of the money was spent on management, leadership, and computer training and very little on basic skills. Even though business does not spend as much as it pretends on basic skills training, it is true that the jobs of the future will require increased skills and education and without them people will be terribly constrained in the kinds of work and earnings they can expect. Because of increased international competition, changing consumer demands, and an accelerating pace of economic and technological change, the jobs of the future will go to the better educated (Bailey, 1990).

MORE EXCEPTIONAL STUDENTS

More, and more needy

While it may not be true that the United States is the first nation in history in which children are the poorest segment of the population, it is true that in the U.S. one out of four children grows up in poverty. The younger the child, the deeper the poverty. Families are now one-third of the homeless and less than one-half of homeless children attend school. Child abuse reports went up 55% from 1981 to 1985 (Molnar, 1989). Not only are the students of the future going to be increasingly minority students who may not speak English, they are going to be more students who are disadvantaged and who have disabilities. It is not just that better assessment techniques are able to discover more students who need services or that schools are unfairly placing students into special classes.

There really are more children who have disabilities. There are simply more children because the population is growing and the white middle class is having fewer babies than it used to. Minority families and disadvantaged families are having the majority of children. Because of poverty and lack of education, their children are more at risk for a variety of circumstances that threatens their well-being. At the same time, improved medical technology has increased the chances that children with formerly life threatening problems will survive, although perhaps with permanent impairments.

Some 350,000 babies are born each year having been exposed prenatally to drugs and or alcohol. More than 300,000 children are homeless each year. Three to four million children have been poisoned by lead. Up to two million children are subject to sexual or physical abuse and many more to neglect. Thousands of children are born every year with HIV (the precursor of AIDS) and the incidence is rapidly increasing. Every year the 37,000 very low birth weight babies who weigh less than three and a half pounds at birth may survive to leave the hospital but will probably experience at least some later learning problems (Stevens & Price, 1992 K).

Being educationally disadvantaged means having inappropriate or nonexistent educational experiences in the family, school, or community. It is highly correlated with minority or ethnic group identity, with living in a poverty household, and having a non-English speaking background, a single parent or poorly educated mother. It is strongly related to poor school achievement. About one-third of the present school population meets these criteria. All of the at risk factors will be worse by 2020.

In 1982, 73% of the population was white but by 2020, only 54% will be. Under Carter, 16% of children lived in poverty, under Reagan, 24% lived in poverty (Pallas, Natriello, and McDill, 1989). According to the National Center for Health Statistics, every day in the U.S. 1,849 children are abused, 1,375 teens drop out of school, 2,407 children are born out of wedlock, six teenagers commit suicide, nine children die of gunshot wounds, and 107 babies die before their first birthday (NCHS, 1989).

Hewett documented the institutionalized neglect and abuse of children in the United States in When the Bough Breaks (1992). She indicts the school system and the health system for perpetuating or condoning much of it. Some of her most grim charges are endorsed in a study by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences. The three year study concluded that American social institutions are failing to help children to survive and mature into healthy adults. All the social "settings" which are supposed to protect and nurture a child, such as family, neighborhood, church, and school, have "come under siege" in the past twenty years are no longer capable of performing their social function successfully (Handler, Chicago Sun-Times, 6/23/93).

In an advertisement that has run in print media for several years, the CDF takes the Founding Fathers to task for "being behind in their child support" because they established a system of government that allows millions of children to live without food, shelter, or health care. The Fund hammers at the complacency of Americans toward their children's condition with the assertion that 20% of American children live in poverty, that the U.S. ranks 24th in infant mortality behind some third world countries, that 2.5 million children are abused or neglected every year, and that 5.5 million regularly do not get enough to eat.

Although the critics of special education complain about the "burgeoning" numbers of children being diagnosed as having characteristics that require special services, evidence exists that demonstrates clearly that even now, when supposedly the referrals to special education have been overused, not all the children who should be receiving services are getting them. The number of children who need services is dramatically higher than the number who are receiving them and it is not because they do not meet the eligibility criteria for referral.

Mental health issues

A national survey by the Division of Epidemiology and Services Research at the National Institute of Mental Health reported that 28.1% of Americans have a mental disorder, a drug abuse problem, or both. Of these 44.7 million people, less than one third sought or received help for their mental problems (Narrow, et al., 1993; Regier, et al., 1993). The Institute of Medicine (1989) reports that up to 14 million American children have some sort of mental disorder, but only about one-third of them are receiving treatment. The study estimated that 12-22% of U.S. children under 18 have a mental disability but only about 2.5 million are getting the treatment they need.

The disabilities range from mood disorders like depression, to behavioral disorders such as hyperactivity, to developmental disorders like autism. At least 20% of inner city children may have psychological problems because of the extreme adversity of their lives (Institute of Medicine, 1989). These problems are serious enough to impede a child's ability to learn in school but most of these children have not been referred to special education where they are entitled to receive services to help them.

Kovacs (1989) suggests that one in 50 school age children show signs of serious depression. She says that there is "compelling evidence" which shows that school age children and teens experience depression. It can be defined as a symptom, long lasting, painful emotion, or as a syndrome, depressed mood with hopelessness, suicidal thoughts, and lethargy. Depressed children usually have other disorders as well, including anxiety and conduct disorders, excessive worry, separation panic, social withdrawal, and eating disorders. The conduct disorder shows a pervasive pattern of physical aggression, stealing, fire setting, and school truancy. If diagnosed, the children can be treated and usually recover, but two thirds get depressed again by their teens and 20% develop manic-depression. Even one bout of depression can cause problems relating to peers and adults and doing well in school.

Very young children express depression as anger, irritability, hyperactivity, clinging, and physical aches and pains. They have significantly low self-esteem and often come from broken homes or have experienced neglect or sexual or physical abuse. Not until their teens do children fully experience the despair about the future that is typical of adult depression (Kashani, 1989). With the increases in abuse and neglect of children related to economic circumstances and the collapse of many family systems, more depressed children can be expected in school but whether they will be diagnosed as anything more than troublemakers remains to be seen (Craig, 1992 K).

Don't cry little one

In 1990 the Children's Defense Fund reported that the health and social status of children had deteriorated significantly in the previous decade. Twelve million children were living in poverty and the pattern of growth demonstrated a differential increase correlated to ethnic status. For whites the increase in the number of poor children was 25.4%, for Hispanics, 29.3%, and for blacks, 6.1%. The rate of increase for Afro-American children was low because more black children had always been poor. The number of children without health insurance increased and immunization rates decreased because "vaccination programs are limited, clinics are inaccessible, appointments are required and waiting lists have grown."

In 1991 the CDF reported that most jobs lost in the recession had belonged to younger workers below the age of 25 who were likely to have young children. Between July of 1990 and July of 1991 people between the ages of 16 and 24 lost one million jobs. There were then 13 million children, an increase of one million in one year, living in poverty. Based on Bureau of Labor statistics, the CDF concluded that "economic recoveries have lost much of their effectiveness in rescuing children from poverty."

In 1992 the CDF released poverty figures based on the 1990 Census. In New York, Houston, and Philadelphia the percentage of children living in poverty was 30%. In Los Angeles, 27.8% of the children are poor, but in Gary, Indiana 43% are poor and in Detroit, 46.6%, almost half the children in the city, are poor. In Overland Park, Kansas for contrast, 3% of the children are poor but in Peoria, Illinois 68% of the black children under age six live in poverty.

However, lest stereotypes remain unchallenged, the CDF noted that only one in three poor children lived in cities, only one in six poor children were black urban poor, and the average poor family had only 2.2 children. These are the children who are now attending or who soon will be attending the public schools and they will bring their family and community history into the schools with them.

Only recently have school districts started to serve the needs of the thousands of homeless children who are not in school. After law suits were filed by the Legal Assistance Fund, some school districts have started to provide some kind of educational services for homeless children (Long, 1992). No one really knows how many children are homeless in the United States. Estimates range from 68,000 every night by the U.S. Government Accounting Office to 500,000 by the National Coalition for the Homeless (CDF, 1991). A Rutgers University study reports that there are in addition, 14 million hidden homeless who have doubled up with friends or family until they can get on their feet and find their own homes (Rutgers, 1989).

The experiences of homeless children are characterized by frequent and constant moving, repeatedly changing schools, overcrowded living quarters, and lack of access to basic essentials such as clothes, food, medical care, and transportation. They experience many of the same conditions and risks as children of poverty and the inner city. They have little sense of roots, personal space, or personal possessions. Their lives lack continuity and structure and they lack self-esteem and self-confidence. Children living in homeless shelters, on the streets, in cars, in motels, or doubled up with other families endure multiple forms of stress and pressure.

Some of the general tendencies often exhibited by children who are homeless include acting out, restlessness, aggressive behavior, depression, school behavioral problems, learning problems, regressive behavior (especially in younger children), inattentiveness, hyperactivity, and persistent tiredness and anxiety. A child living in a shelter is vulnerable to physical, mental, and emotional maladies because the whole experience tends to erode the child's primary protective structure--the family.

(Linehan, 1992 K)

Even students who have a home to go to after school are more at risk for certain problems. "Latchkey" children under self care are more likely to abuse alcohol, marijuana, and cigarettes than those who are under adult supervision (Richardson, 1989). In a study of 4,932 middle class eighth graders in Los Angeles and San Diego it was found that 28.6% of the children were at the highest risk because they spent 11 hours or more per week unsupervised. Those who spent the most time unsupervised were twice as likely to have experimented with alcohol, marijuana, or cigarettes. Of the high risk group, 23% reported having 11 or more drinks the previous week as opposed to 11% of the supervised students and 24% were using marijuana as opposed to 14% (Richardson, 1989).

The evidence is clear that children having children, especially poor, ignorant children having babies, most often do not have adequate parenting skills. Girls in their early teens, as young as twelve, have been having babies at an increasing rate. A problem must be fairly desperate before conservatives start calling for expensive programs to solve social ills. George Will, an outspoken apologist for conservative thinking and causes, has observed that the problem of "Mothers Who Don't Know How" is perpetuating the cycle of poverty and despair.

Because many of these very young, very poor mothers have never been properly mothered themselves, they do not know how to mother their own children. Their children need intervention early in life before they lose the fullest potential for intelligence. Programs that teach parenting skills, good nutrition, and home safety are essential for the young mothers who often must care for their children without the help of a father. Hardly a weepy do-gooder, Will thinks the money spent on such a program well spent because it would save so much in social and welfare costs later (Will, 1990).

Medical issues

There are many medical conditions which result in children being at risk for school failure or in having disabilities which qualify them for special education services. Some children are born healthy and normal but later contract a disease such as cancer, meningitis, or encephalitis which seriously effects their mental capabilities. Other children have chronic or hereditary diseases which also severely effect their abilities to function in a classroom. Many of these children would simply have died a few years ago, but medical science has progressed sufficiently that they now survive, although they may suffer some cognitive and motor defects. For instance, in the 1950's, a child diagnosed with leukemia had an average life expectancy of three months. Now, 90% achieve remission and 80% are symptom free after five years. However, half to two thirds of the children who survive acute lymphocytic leukemia need special education services, partly because of the effects of chemotherapy and radiation therapy on the brain (Bartel & Thurman, 1992 K).

Children with diabetes, sickle cell anemia, thalassemia, cystic fibrosis, hemophilia and a host of other debilitating diseases such as cerebral palsy and multiple sclerosis have medical needs that significantly interfere with their education and which generally require special education services. The problems they endure are chronic and require frequent, sometimes continuous treatment. They may be dependent on life support equipment like ventilators, feeding tubes, apnea monitors, and other medical technology. They often require a full time aide to monitor their life support equipment and to assist them in their educational tasks. They may require the services of a nurse, a physical therapist, and an occupational therapist for specific treatments or to get the most out of their educational placement (Fraser, Hensinger, & Phelps, 1990). All of these children would be served in the regular classroom under "inclusion."

Doctors used to believe that if a child did not die outright of acute lead poisoning, he would recover without significant side effects. Today, doctors believe that there is no "safe" dosage of lead, that any amount, even one that does not produce symptoms, causes impaired neurobehavioral functioning. Children who have been exposed to lead poisoning at any point in their lives, even prenatally, are at risk for learning difficulties and behavior problems. The children with higher levels of lead in their bodies have lower IQ scores, poorer language skills, and more attention problems. Teachers report that they are more distractible, less persistent, more dependent, less well-organized, less able to follow directions, and generally lower in overall functioning than children with less lead stored in their teeth and bones (Needleman, 1992 K).

The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (1988 K) estimates that 16% of American children have neurotoxic levels of lead in their blood. There is a socio-economic and racial differentiation in the levels among American groups however. Seven percent of middle class white children have toxic levels of lead in their blood, but 25% of poor white children have toxic levels. Among poor black children the rate is 55%. More than half of the poor black children in the United States have toxic levels of lead poisoning their brains while they are trying to cope with dysfunctional families, disintegrating communities, and underfunded, understaffed, overburdened schools.

The Center for Disease Control and its Public Health Service has developed a plan for eliminating childhood lead poisoning (1991) that would stop most lead poisoning in a few years. However, the Department of Housing and Urban Development has not accepted its responsibility to implement the plan because it would cost about $30 billion to remove lead from the nation's houses. It has refused to make efforts to secure the necessary funding for the project even to the point of maintaining that sufficient funds were already available but that no one had applied for them. Under the Bush Administration, HUD's lack of endeavor spurred a Government Accounting Office report on HUD Not Fulfilling Its Responsibility to Prevent Lead Poisoning.

HUD was supported in its lack of activity by the lead industry which has fought every effort to deal with the effects of lead poisoning.

The lead industry and its academic spokespersons have labored mightily to obscure the health effects of lead. This is not a new phenomenon; the industry has worked to camouflage the toxic properties of lead for 50 years. Paid representatives of the lead industry have gone so far as to allege scientific misconduct on the part of those investigating the adverse effects of lead.

(Needleman, 1992 K)

HIV babies

More and more babies are being born infected with HIV from their mothers. The CDC reports that the rate of infection in the American population overall is 17.8 cases per 100,000. The rate for the African American population is 49.2 per 100,000 and 31.4 in the Hispanic population (Off. of Technology Assessment, 1992). HIV which precedes the fullblown AIDS infection, can last for several years. The virus, which eventually causes the death of its victims, debilitates them over time and allows them to be attacked by opportunistic infections of other diseases as it destroys their immune system. Pediatric HIV infection is linked to prenatal and acquired brain damage, resulting in degenerative abnormalities in cognitive, behavioral, motor, linguistic, and sensory-perceptual development and has become the greatest infectious cause of mental retardation in the U.S. (Diamond, 1989).

The tragic progress of the HIV infection results in the loss of previously attained developmental milestones. Motor delays or regression include poor muscle tone, reduced flexibility and muscle strength, spasticity, and poor motor control. Cognitive abnormalities include specific learning disabilities, mental retardation, visual and spatial deficits, and decreased alertness. Both expressive and receptive language are delayed through a combination of cognitive deficits and neuromuscular impairments. It is common for these children to develop emotional and behavioral problems ranging from hyperactivity to autistic-like withdrawal (Siegal, 1992 K).

A disproportionate number of children with HIV infection are members of low income, minority families living in the inner city. They may live with their parents, members of their extended family, foster parents, or in residential placements. Their families may need such basics as food, housing, clothing, drug abuse treatment, transportation, and general financial assistance as well as access to treatment for their child's HIV infection. Often these children and their families are served by the schools and community resources which are the least equipped and funded to provide for the exhausting array of urgent needs and chronic troubles which they daily manifest.

Confidentiality of the HIV status is extremely important since the public response often involves hysteria. No school personnel have a "right to know" the status, only a "need to know" when it effects their ability to provide appropriate services, and then only with parental consent (Siegal, 1992 K). HIV children receive extensive special education services because they suffer a complex set of neurological damage which alters as the disease progresses. The least restrictive environment for these children for long periods of time is the mainstream classroom. The course of the disease is so variable that a diagnostic re-evaluation every four to six months is necessary to detect changes in developmental abilities.

Crack, booze, and crystal

The American Pediatric Association estimates that about 300,000 to 350,000 "crack" babies are born in the U.S. every year. They are born to mothers who are smoking crack cocaine during their pregnancy. The degree of damage to the baby varies with the degree of addiction and other health factors. They may be a new biological underclass who will make it necessary "to define an entirely new, organic brain syndrome" based on the physical and chemical damage done to their fetal brains by their drug abusing mothers (Greer, 1990).

Born addicted to cocaine, they have strokes, seizures, and can have microcephalia, missing bowels, and malformed genitals. Fifteen per cent of pregnant women admit abuse of drugs or alcohol, but some studies show that among poor women, the rate may actually be more like 30%. Addicted infants have poor body state regulation, tremors, chronic irritability, and poor visual orientation. Post-drug impairment syndrome in school age children consists of poor abstract reasoning, poor memory, poor judgment, inability to concentrate or deal with stress, and frequent tantrums and violent behavior.

We do not have anywhere near the knowledge base or the educational technology to even begin to create the appropriate support structure for dealing with these children. Nor do we have any realistic picture of what kinds of resources we will need to work on their problems.

(Greer, 1990)

Maternal use of cocaine can cause problems for the unborn child but perhaps paternal use of cocaine can also cause problems. Cocaine can piggyback on sperm cells because the sperm cells have binding sites for the cocaine and it does not kill or slow the sperm (Yazigi, 1991). No link has been shown between paternal cocaine use and developmental deficits in human offspring. Some rat studies have examined offspring of cocaine impaired male rats who were unable to perform basic tasks like finding food. It is possible that in humans the effects might be more subtle, causing learning disabilities or memory deficits (Yazigi, 1991).

Not all cocaine exposed children are uniformly or severely affected by their mother's addiction and not all of the medical, behavioral, and learning problems these children exhibit are necessarily caused directly by their exposure to cocaine. When the children continue to live with drug abusing caretakers, they can be jeopardized daily by abuse or neglect. Abuse can occur if the caretaker is intoxicated or recovering from a binge. The neglect can take the form of poor postnatal nutrition for the child, poor medical care, and an impoverished learning environment. Intensive interventions in the home and school can have positive effects on the developmental progress of the crack babies (Griffith, 1992 K).

Joining the 300,000 per year or so crack babies in school will be the 8,000 children born annually with fetal alcohol syndrome or FAS and the 65,000 children born every year with FAE, fetal alcohol effects (Dorris, 1990). Abusive drinking among low income pregnant women treated at large urban hospitals doubled in the last 10 years, mainly due to a tripling of white women reporting abuse. The rate held steady for black and Hispanic women but went from 1.13% in 1977 to 3.34% in 1987 for white women (Little, 1989). In May of 1993, the Center for Disease Control announced that the number of babies born with FAS had tripled between 1979 and 1992, going from a rate of one every 10,000 births to 3.7 every 10,000 births.

Children with FAS or the more moderate FAE suffer from the most common teratogenic damage in human populations. Children with FAS and FAE can both be just as severely handicapped by the effects of maternal drinking (Burgess & Streissguth, 1992 K). The injury ranges from mild to severe and includes brain damage, growth retardation, mental retardation, distortions of the face, heart problems, (Hanson, Streissguth, and Smith, 1978) and neurobehavioral dysfunctions such as hyperactivity, motor problems, attention deficits, and cognitive disabilities (Burgess & Streissguth, 1992 K). These children suffer from serious health and educational problems.

Alcohol consumption has also been connected to "very low birth weight" babies. When VLBW children reach school age many of them demonstrate significant behavior problems, articulation and fluency difficulties, and trouble with expressing ideas. They have difficulty attending to a task, working independently, and following directions. They are not unusually active and instead are passive and withdrawn. They experience difficulty with fine motor skills and auditory and visual discrimination tasks. These children do not have abnormally low intelligence test scores but could none the less be anticipated to have significant problems in school and are definitely at risk for failure (Klein, 1988).

Low birth weight is defined as less than 5.5 pounds at birth, very low birth weight is less than 3.3 pounds, and extremely low birth weight is less than 2.2 pounds. The National Center for Health Statistics reports that 6.8% of all births are low birth weight, meaning that about 255,000 such infants are born every year. Many of these babies are born prematurely which occurs in 11% of all births, meaning that about 412,000 such infants are born every year. Many of the causes of these conditions are increasing, such as adolescent pregnancy, maternal age greater than 35 years, poverty, poor nutrition, poor prenatal care, and drug and alcohol abuse. Both low birth weight and premature babies are at risk for poor development. Early intervention for cognitive, linguistic, and motor skills development can make all the difference, but many of these children will need special education services in school (Bartel & Thurman, 1992 K).

A future addition to the rather long list of toxic poisons for the fetus of an addicted mother is methamphetamine which has not yet become a big problem in the continental United States. It is used by certain groups like truck drivers and biker clubs, but it has not made it into the mainstream of drug use. It will soon however, as the price of cocaine and marijuana and even alcohol go up.

It is called "speed," or "ice," or "crystal meth." Ice is as addictive as crack cocaine but actually more pernicious. It can be made from easily obtained chemicals and provides 8 to 24 hours of euphoria compared to 20 minutes from smoking crack. Prolonged use can cause fatal lung and kidney damage and long lasting psychological damage. In four years time, ice surpassed grass and crack as Hawaii's number one drug problem.

People who use ice tend to be in high stress jobs that require long hours of work. It is odorless, hard to detect, and makes the user feel good and stay focused on his or her work. It also makes them violent and 70% of spousal abuse cases in Hawaii now involve crystal meth. It is a cheap high that is long lasting and provides a sense of well being and control. For $50 an addict can stay high for a week. For the very addicted, smoking ice or "amping" causes an amplified euphoria. The number of drug exposed infants born in Honolulu tripled due mainly to their mothers' use of ice. The effect on the newborns is severe and they tend to be asocial and incapable of bonding.

We're seeing people with dysfunctions two and half years after they've stopped using. That's scary....If you thought cocaine dependency was bad, that's in the minor leagues compared to this drug.

(E.Pico in Lerner, 1989)

These are the children who will need services from special education in the future. These are the children which the business community expects education to serve without adequate funds.