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January 31, 2002        News Morgue Search  www.feat.org/search/news.asp

EDUCATION

·        L.A. to Integrate Disabled Pupils

·        Disabled Toronto’s Students Get Year’s Reprieve from Inclusion

 

RESEARCH

·        Stem Cell Study Provides New Clues To Origin Of Down Syndrome

·        Medical Book: The Biology Of The Autistic Syndromes

·        Reader’s Posts

 

 

L.A. to Integrate Disabled Pupils

Reform: The change will end special education schools, mainstream 35,000 students. Critics, backers agree that huge financial and emotional challenges are ahead.

[By Erika Hayasaki, Solomon Moore and Jennifer Sinco Kelleher in the

LA Times.]

http://www.latimes.com/la-013102special.story

The Los Angeles Unified School District is starting a dramatic overhaul of its special education programs, aiming to place into regular classes 35,000 disabled students who now are segregated. The reforms will end separate schools for disabled children over the next four years.

Virtually all 660 campuses in the district will be affected as many physically and psychologically handicapped youngsters currently in separate classes join mainstream students, officials say. Sixteen special education centers will be at the forefront of the integration.

Many parents of disabled children welcome the shift, which comes as a result of a 1996 settlement of a federal lawsuit and a recent implementation plan. Some families worry whether the children, whose disabilities can include cerebral palsy, blindness, retardation and severe learning problems, will be traumatized in regular classrooms. Some mainstream teachers fear that disruptions in already difficult classroom situations could hinder other children’s learning.

Though many details remain to be worked out, everyone agrees that there are huge financial costs and emotional challenges ahead.

“We’re talking about a real cultural change in the embracing of all children and meeting the needs of all children,” said Donnalyn Jacque-Anton, assistant superintendent for special education.

Critics say the changes are long overdue, and that the Los Angeles district lags behind other big cities.

For example, San Francisco began integrating its disabled students five years ago and New York City started four years ago, although those and other large systems report that making the changes was difficult, especially in recruiting teachers and adapting buildings.

“LAUSD operates the biggest segregated system in the U.S.,” said Robert Myers, attorney for parents in the federal lawsuit which alleged that handicapped children were getting an inadequate education. “Our system is inferior, and it is getting in the way of students’ development.”

Studies show that most physically and psychologically disabled students progress faster when they are placed in at least some classes with non-disabled peers. In Los Angeles only 18% of all disabled children attended regular classes last year; that is less than half the national average.

Under the integration plan, most Los Angeles district schools, including 16 current special education centers, would have a disabled student population of no less than 7% and no more than 17% of their enrollments.

Most special education youngsters would attend mainstream schools, and many would spend at least part of the day in special classes as more than 45,000 already do. Exceptions would be made for some who are deaf or severely disabled.

District officials say tens of thousands of teachers and principals will need extra training and buildings will require renovation at a cost of millions, but details haven’t been worked out.

“We’re at the planning and implementation stage,” said Supt. Roy Romer. “But we don’t have all the answers.”

He said he is uncertain whether the goals are reachable by the federally mandated deadline of 2006. Other educators point out that Los Angeles schools also will have to contend with budget shortfalls and a lack of qualified teachers.

Alejandro Hernandez looks forward to mainstreaming. His 4-year-old daughter, Marijose, has a genetic disorder that has left her unable to speak, walk or feed herself. Though he is pleased with her classes at Willenberg Special Education Center in San Pedro, he would rather his daughter attend school with non-disabled peers.

“My daughter is so happy when she hears other kids singing, laughing, talking,” he said. None of Marijose’s current classmates can talk. An integrated class will be “better for her development.”

L.A. Unified plans to build on the successes at Alfonso B. Perez School in East Los Angeles. Perez has 430 special education students, ages 3 to 22. Some are in wheelchairs, others wear braces to hold their heads up; some teenagers wear diapers.

About 100 non-disabled children also attend Perez, mostly taught separately but integrated during recess and lunch.

Wendy Matsutani, the school’s Title I coordinator, said parents of non-disabled students were attracted to the teachers’ expertise and the tolerant atmosphere.

Principal Beverly Feinstein is not certain that classroom integration will work districtwide. Mainstream teachers “have their plate full with . .  . reading and math,” she said.

Some parents and educators worry that regular classrooms won’t offer disabled children the attention they need and that the youngsters may be stigmatized by non-disabled students.

“They’re not going to accept these children,” said Lisa Delgado, whose 16-year-old severely disabled daughter, Jennifer, attends Perez. Jennifer was mainstreamed in kindergarten, but moved to Perez when she started having daily seizures. She is mute and immobile.

“Can the district really say they can provide for my daughter in a general education setting?” she asked.

Maria Mendoza tried to place her 17-year-old disabled son, who cannot speak, in a regular school but he was badly teased there. “I saw my son suffer,” she said. “When the bus arrived here to pick him up, he didn’t want to go.” He is now at Frank D. Lanterman High School, a special education campus.

Cal State Los Angeles education professor Mary Falvey, who co-wrote the integration plan, said the goal is an inclusive environment where such traumas are rare.

“The more kids go to school together,” she said, “the more likely they are to accept each other. And, yes, this will be tough.”

Los Angeles district officials said special education teachers will still concentrate on children with disabilities. But in some cases, they will be in a regular classroom, helping its teacher. Some special education teachers fear that will mean double duties for them.

Tonya Hollis-Theus, PTA president at Clover Avenue Elementary School in West Los Angeles, has doubts about the plan.

“I’m all for putting special needs students in a regular class, but the district needs to provide teaching assistants in the class to assist on an individual basis,” she said. “With the recent cutbacks, I don’t think they can provide that.”

The plan resulted from a 1993 class-action suit initiated by the family of Chanda Smith, then a disabled Los Angeles student who flunked 10^th grade twice after her requests for help were denied.

The lawsuit was among similar cases that swept the nation after passage of the 1973 Individuals With Disabilities Act required schools to provide extra assistance to children with special needs. The U.S. Department of Education has repeatedly found Los Angeles out of compliance with the law.

Falvey, the Cal State L.A. professor, said there should be opportunities for even the most severely disabled students to be included in regular activities as lunch and assemblies. “To the maximum extent possible, they should be educated in the same classrooms [as general students],” she said.

The district has $93 million in annual contracts with about 85 nonpublic special schools for the severely emotionally disturbed, autistic or learning disabled. The district must try to reduce such referrals.

Alan Gartner, a special education consultant, agreed that almost any disabled child can be integrated to some degree.

“It’s a question of what the district is willing to do,” he said.

A key finding in the federal court’s investigation into Los Angeles

was that too many African American children were identified as disabled and too few limited English speakers.

Over the past two years, New York schools reduced the number of children defined as disabled from 160,000 to 140,000 by making more careful evaluations, said Francine Goldstein, who oversees New York’s special education programs.

Deborah McKnight, interim director of the San Francisco Unified School District, said that nearly all of the system’s 7,100 special education students go to regular classes for at least part of the day.

However, it has been difficult to retrain regular teachers, and there

is a shortage of special education instructors. The change in San Francisco

has been, she said, “very hard. It’s an ongoing process.”  Copyright 2002

Los Angeles Times

 

 

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Disabled Toronto’s Students Get Year’s Reprieve from Inclusion

[By Laura Bobak In The Toronto Sun.]

http://www.canoe.ca/TorontoNews/ts.ts-01-31-0033.html

Toronto’s public school board has temporarily shelved a plan that would affect up to 2,000 students with learning disabilities and mild intellectual delays.

The scheme, which would shift many special education students with disabilities ranging from attention deficit disorder to autism from specialized programs to local schools closer to their homes by September 2002, has caused much concern among parents.

Parents say the changes are being rushed through too quickly and without enough consultation.

The proposal would save the cash-strapped board $5 million in transportation costs since students would be closer to home.

Trustee Shelley Carroll proposed the plan be delayed a year to allow for more parent input.

“We don’t have a map in front of us to go down this road, yet. We don’t really know how we’re going to implement this,” Carroll said, adding she’s not opposed to integrating students with special needs into regular classrooms.

Trustees ultimately decided to delay implementation until September 2003.

Meanwhile, other parents were at the school board meeting last night to lobby trustees to defer plans to sell the board headquarters at 155 College St.

Opponents of the sale, including city councillors Olivia Chow and Michael Walker, held a candlelight vigil outside headquarters to protest the sale to the University of Toronto, which has offered $17 million for the buildings.

Supporters say the board needs the funds for school repairs and reduce administration space.

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Stem Cell Study Provides New Clues To Origin Of Down Syndrome

http://www.news.wisc.edu/releases/print.msql?id=7041

Using stem cells as a window to the earliest developmental processes in the human brain, scientists have found that a group of genes critical for brain development is selectively disrupted in Down syndrome.

Writing in the recent issue (Jan. 26, 2002) of the British medical journal The Lancet, a team of scientists from the University of Cambridge, University College London and the University of Wisconsin-Madison report findings from a genetic study based on stem cells derived from Down syndrome and normal fetal tissue.

The results illuminate some of the key cellular and molecular processes that give rise to Down syndrome, one of the most common causes of developmental disability in humans. The study is the first of its kind using human cells.

The central finding of the study, according to Clive N. Svendsen, a UW-Madison professor of anatomy and neurology and a co-author of the report, is that a faulty genetic circuit results in dramatic changes in the development of the cells that make up the early brain.

“These findings point to a serious deficit in specific genes known to be important for neuronal development,” said Svendsen who is currently director of the stem cell research program at the UW-Madison Waisman Center, one of the world’s leading centers for the study of human development, developmental disabilities, and neurodegenerative diseases.

The Lancet study, which Svendsen co-authored with lead author Sabine Bahn, University of Cambridge, and others has begun to shed light on the earliest genetic events in humans that give rise to a serious cognitive disability.

It has long been known that most instances of Down syndrome, which affects nearly 350,000 people in the United States alone, results from an extra chromosome, chromosome 21, in the cells of those who have the condition. However, the precise genetic events that lead to the abnormal brain development of people with Down syndrome have not been understood.

“Until now, we have only had mouse models of Down syndrome, which have not been so faithful in reproducing all aspects of Down syndrome,” Svendsen said. “Now we have a complementary source of human stem cells with extra chromosome 21, and which can be grown indefinitely and used by a large number of scientists.”  Although the results presented in the current Lancet study are preliminary, identifying the faulty behavior of key genes that give rise to Down syndrome could ultimately lead to better treatments, including new drug and, possibly, gene therapies.

“This provides a nice model for drug or other types of intervention to try and get (the developing brain) back to normal neuronal production from the stem cells,” Svendsen explained.

The study was made possible, according to Svendsen, by new advances that permit scientists to grow stem cells in culture, monitor gene activity within the cells, and observe the cells as they progress down the developmental pathway to becoming the cells that make up the human brain.

In the Down syndrome cells, it was found that there is a significant reduction in the percentage of cells that go on to form neurons compared to non-Down syndrome cells. Moreover, nerve fibers from the Down syndrome cells were shorter and misshapen.

Using techniques that permit scientists to see which genes are active in both a Down syndrome sample and a non-Down syndrome sample, the group was able to home in on the genes that seemed to be responsible. Knowing which genes are involved is critical because it opens the door to developing gene and drug therapies that could prevent the onset or development of the syndrome.

“I think it is early in the game, but now we can work with a new model for Down syndrome which uses human cells rather than mouse cells,” said Svendsen. “If we can understand the loss of neurons in Down syndrome, I think it may lead to some novel treatments in the future.”

 

 

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Medical Book: The Biology Of The Autistic Syndromes “Christopher Gillberg and Mary Coleman: The biology of the autistic syndromes, 3^rd edn.”

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_ui ds=11810284&dopt=Abstract <- - Address ends here.

Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2000) 330 pages (ISBN 1-898-68322-0) pound60.00, $95.00.  Thapar A.

Department of Psychological Medicine, University of Wales College of

Medicine, Heath Park, Cardiff, CF 14 4XN, Wales, Thapar@cardiff.ac.uk

PMID: 11810284 [PubMed - in process]

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Reader’s Posts

In need of used materials to help with my son’s ABA program.  Son is 3 yrs

old and we just hired services of an ABA clinic located in Jackson, MS.  We

had been doing therapy at home using the Behavioral Intervention Guide but

now need to step it up a notch.  Specifically looking for realistic picture

I’ve never written in to you before, but I’ve answered many posts myself.  Sometimes I recieve a reply and sometimes not, but really is this such a HUGE issue.  How petty and childish!  Considering everything we parents deal with with our children, is a reply to an email that important?  I realize it’s approperiate, but people do get busy and forget.  Please be done with the bickering once and for all and leave this space for people who need it.

I would like to thank everyone who responded to my quest for ABA videos.  I truly appreciate all of the time and experience that everyone shared.  I have ordered the video from NYFAC “Discrete Trial Teaching” - I have not received it, however; it seemed to get great “reviews”.

We are looking to compare home therapy programs (15-20 hrs) in Orange

County, CA using ABA for our Autistic 5yr old son who will be attending

Does anyone have information on special education/autism services for a 14

year old with autism available in Belgium and/or through the Dept. of

 

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