Special ed debate returns to haunt Ontario

Of all the issues under debate at Queen’s Park, none is fraught with more emotion and less clarity than “ special education.” That is the label we have given to the programs designed to assist children with problems ranging all the way from mild learning disabilities to severe cases of autism and Down syndrome. These programs used to be designed, delivered and funded at the local level, with wildly different standards from board to board. When the Mike Harris Conservatives took over complete control of education financing, however, an attempt was made to standardize and rationalize the system. The results were decidedly mixed. The Conservatives claimed they were spending more money than ever before on special education. But parents complained about long wait lists just to get their children assessed, and educators voiced concerns about the new system’s onerous red tape.

There were also complaints that the system was set up to encourage school boards to overestimate the number of special needs kids in order to attract more funding. Some parents objected bitterly that small behavioural problems often led to the identification and resulting stigmatization of their children as “ special needs” cases.

Indeed, from 1998 to 2004, the proportion of special needs children in Ontario’s schools more than doubled from 1.3 per cent to 2.8 per cent. There are now more than 50,000 identified special needs children in our schools, and the programs for them cost $ 1.9 billion annually — or $800 million more than the province spends on the entire community college system. The Liberals inherited this messy problem when they took office in 2003 and they promptly cancelled the old Conservative apparatus for funding special education. They have yet to replace it with a new system; that is the job of a task force headed up by Education Minister Gerard Kennedy’s parliamentary assistant, Kathleen Wynne, a former Toronto school trustee.

In the interim, however, the government is continuing to pour money into special education — an additional $240 million, by Kennedy’s count. But in legislative committee hearings last week, Kennedy was grilled on this figure by Frank Klees and Rosario Marchese, respectively the Conservative and New Democratic education critics. Both suggested the number is inflated. Marchese also suggested the government’s ongoing review of special education is really a ploy to cut back funding in this area. As evidence, Marchese produced internal memos from senior education ministry bureaucrats to the school boards urging that special education programs be put on a “ more sustainable” footing and putting the boards on notice that the increase in funding this year will be capped at $40 million. Kennedy bafflegabbed away the “ sustainable” memo and said the reference to a $40 million cap was erroneous. The Liberal education minister also came under fire from the Conservative critic Klees over the “ increasing frequency” of “ exclusions” — decisions by principals to bar students with behavioural problems ( often autistic kids) from school. Kennedy said he would look into the matter and report back.

In the background of this repartee between the minister and his critics lies a two- decade debate over whether severely disabled children should be integrated into regular classrooms or segregated in their own classes or even schools. It is a subject that bitterly divides both parents and educators. Kennedy and the Liberals appear to be leaning toward an even more integrated approach in their review of special education, which is likely to recommend more training for regular classroom teachers in the handling of disabled children. But Klees says he recently toured a segregated facility in Michigan and was impressed by what he saw there.

“ I think it’s something we have to look at very seriously,” he says. The special education debate, then, is far from over. It may have just begun in earnest.

Afootnote: I cannot let this moment pass without saluting Beland Honderich, the former publisher of The Star. As a journalist, he was a great contrarian who led newspaper in crusades against, among other things, free trade with the U. S. and the Meech Lake deal when virtually every other newspaper in the country was on the other side of those debates. He did not fear being alone on such issues. He will be sadly missed. Ian Urquhart’s provincial affairs column appears Monday, Wednesday and Saturday. iurquha@thestar.ca.