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Flexibility important for educating deaf students | Democrat and Chronicle | democratandchronicle.com
This is National Deaf Awareness Week, an opportunity for legislators, school administrators and parents to become better educated about educating deaf children.
In particular, there is an increasingly common assumption that deaf children should be educated in regular school classrooms. Under the law, deaf children, like others classified as disabled, must be provided with a continuum of placements so they can be educated in the "least restrictive environment."
But the regular classroom is not necessarily the least restrictive environment for deaf children. Deaf people are different from other groups in being considered both legally disabled and a linguistic-cultural minority.
So deaf children may not be different under the law, but they are different from others recognized by the U.S. government as being disabled.
The least restrictive environment is not a place that can be determined in advance. It is a diagnostic determination that must be made on an individual basis. Research at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf and elsewhere has shown that "deaf children are not hearing children who can't hear."
There are cognitive differences between deaf and hearing children — separate from language — that affect how and what they learn. School placement, therefore, must be based on comprehensive evaluation by qualified individuals who can communicate effectively with deaf children, and not be a matter of administrative expedience.
After more than a quarter century of mainstream education, the median reading level of deaf and hard-of-hearing students hovers around the fourth-grade level (up from only about the third-grade level 25 years ago).
Clearly, public schools are not a panacea, although there is no evidence that schools for the deaf — or anything in between — have the solution.
NTID research, however, has shown that programs designed for deaf students can match methods and materials to their strengths and needs in ways that other settings cannot, if only because most general education teachers are usually unaware of their differences. This does not make schools for the deaf the right placement for all deaf children, but it does make it the right place for some deaf children.
If we want deaf children to succeed in school and employment rather than depending on public assistance and charity, we cannot ignore individual differences.
Channeling deaf children into placements of convenience might feel efficient, but there is no evidence that it pays off economically or academically. All placement options should be considered equally, with final determination made on the basis of assessments by qualified professionals.
We need to do what works for each child, not what is easiest.
This is National Deaf Awareness Week, an opportunity for legislators, school administrators and parents to become better educated about educating deaf children.
In particular, there is an increasingly common assumption that deaf children should be educated in regular school classrooms. Under the law, deaf children, like others classified as disabled, must be provided with a continuum of placements so they can be educated in the "least restrictive environment."
But the regular classroom is not necessarily the least restrictive environment for deaf children. Deaf people are different from other groups in being considered both legally disabled and a linguistic-cultural minority.
So deaf children may not be different under the law, but they are different from others recognized by the U.S. government as being disabled.
The least restrictive environment is not a place that can be determined in advance. It is a diagnostic determination that must be made on an individual basis. Research at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf and elsewhere has shown that "deaf children are not hearing children who can't hear."
There are cognitive differences between deaf and hearing children — separate from language — that affect how and what they learn. School placement, therefore, must be based on comprehensive evaluation by qualified individuals who can communicate effectively with deaf children, and not be a matter of administrative expedience.
After more than a quarter century of mainstream education, the median reading level of deaf and hard-of-hearing students hovers around the fourth-grade level (up from only about the third-grade level 25 years ago).
Clearly, public schools are not a panacea, although there is no evidence that schools for the deaf — or anything in between — have the solution.
NTID research, however, has shown that programs designed for deaf students can match methods and materials to their strengths and needs in ways that other settings cannot, if only because most general education teachers are usually unaware of their differences. This does not make schools for the deaf the right placement for all deaf children, but it does make it the right place for some deaf children.
If we want deaf children to succeed in school and employment rather than depending on public assistance and charity, we cannot ignore individual differences.
Channeling deaf children into placements of convenience might feel efficient, but there is no evidence that it pays off economically or academically. All placement options should be considered equally, with final determination made on the basis of assessments by qualified professionals.
We need to do what works for each child, not what is easiest.