Controversy builds over disciplining disabled students
June 11, 1996
Web posted at: 10:00 a.m. EDTFrom Correspondent Kathleen Koch
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The House and Senate recently passed a bill giving schools more flexibility in disciplining disabled students, and some parents fear the law will be used to keep such youngsters out of public schools.
The law amends the 1975 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which restricted how public schools could discipline the nation's 5.4 million disabled students. The 1975 law was passed to protect disabled students from discrimination.
But lawmakers reevaluated its provisions after a special education student with a history of problem behavior was arrested for killing a fellow student in Missouri last year. Congress is now considering legislation that would change again the way teachers punish disabled students.
The mother of a student suspended in another incident worries that the current law allows schools to expel disabled children who are deemed difficult to deal with.
Her 16-year-old son, Christopher Weigle, who has Down syndrome, was suspended for two days in November after he was found toting a packing knife that boys at his public high school persuaded him to stash in his backpack.
"When I left that day to talk to the principal he said, 'Mom, you tell them I'm sorry. I love my school. I didn't know,'" said his mother, Lori Whetzel. Weigle said he knows it is wrong to take a knife to school, "because it is very dangerous."
Double standard?
Following the Missouri slaying, even though the disabled student was admitted to regular classes because of an administrative error, some lawmakers and educators began arguing that the discipline restrictions set a double standard.
"For example, if you have a hearing-impaired child who brings a gun or drugs to school -- has nothing to do with the impairment -- but they are free from any action," said Rep. Randy Cunningham, R-California. (128K AIFF or WAV sound)
The principal of Brooke Point High School in Virginia says that in many cases disciplining a disabled student differently than other students makes it hard to keep order.
"Once that student realizes, 'Hey, I can get by with this, nothing can be done to me because I am under this provision,' then they would continue to try to keep being disruptive and that can happen in a school," Kerrington Young Tillery said.
Teachers say the federal protections often keep problem students in classes, to the detriment of all students.
"When even you have one child who is extremely disruptive, who is turning over tables, throwing chairs, punching children . . . No learning can get done . . . No instruction can get accomplished," Janet Bass of the American Federation of Teachers said.
Changes afoot
A bill moving through Congress would let schools discipline disabled students as they would any other and expel them if necessary, if the infraction is unrelated to the student's disability.
Lori Whetzel fears if the proposal passes, schools will have an excuse to unnecessarily discipline disabled students.
"They are too hard to deal with, and we don't want to. Take them over there and let somebody else do it. And that's exactly what will happen," she said.
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