Special Education: The District We’ve Never Had. The One We Should Build.

Take a step back in time with me. I’ve got an idea, but I want to tell it in context.

Before 1975 a school in Texas could legally turn a disabled child away at the door. Unbelievably, it was the law. And there is nothing I can do or say that can ever make that right.

What this means is that nationally, almost two million disabled kids were shut out of public school entirely, and millions more got only partial access, a few hours here or there if anything at all.

Here in Austin, a lot of those kids were not sitting in a classroom somewhere feeling left out. They were sent to the Austin State School, an institution that opened in 1917 a few miles from where AISD headquarters sits today. By the 1960s it held thousands of residents, many of them children, who simply were not part of public education at all.

Two federal court cases stopped that around 1971 and 1972:
- PARC vs Pennsylvania
- Mills vs D.C. School Board

Brave people went forth and fought the system. And forced the question of whether a disabled child even had a right to a public education. The answer was yes, they did.

That fight led to the federal law in 1975 that first guaranteed school for children with disabilities.

What existed before 1975 was awful and exclusionary. What came after 1975 was a law that finally let these kids into the building, but not the inclusion so many were looking for. The law that opened the door also built new walls and created separate classrooms. Because, you know, when has separating people NOT worked? And yes, I’m being facetious. It’s a stupid question. All people are social. We belong together, not separated.

So, after 1975 things got a slight bit better. Not great but better. Better as in disabled children were allowed, no, were recognized as having the right to attend public schools.

That was 51 years ago. The world has moved forward. But when you walk on any school campus, many of our special education student are still separated. I have never understood how that was good for anyone.

I am writing this because I think we can build something better than anything that has ever actually existed.

You see, I’m from Austin. And I grew up believing Austin was good. It was a special place filled with special people who were able to think outside the box. And people that did good.

I can remember driving back from college in Dallas with a friend and winding down what was then 1325 to my parent’s home in Allandale. Back then one lane of each side of the road was red, and one was black. And with the yellow and white striping it was pretty cool looking. My friend said, “It’s like the road to Oz.” And I remember thinking, “She’s right. Austin is like Oz.” Only the good parts of Oz, the good people, the beautiful surroundings and the innovation. Not the flying monkeys, phony wizard and all the bad stuff. Just the good. And you know, I still believe that.

And I believe Austin ISD is poised to make a difference in Special Education. And hopefully create a model for the rest of the country and the world.

Right now, special education runs on something called a continuum of placements. On paper it sounds reasonable to the people that put it on paper. And it goes something like this; a student can move anywhere along a line, from fully included in a general classroom all the way to a fully separate one, depending on what the school decides they need. That need is based on an evaluation from the school or from an independent provider. That test is a snapshot of that child on the day(s) of testing. And that snapshot is often times taken as the gospel of that child for as many years as the parent or guardian allows that evaluation to stand. I’ve seen situations where a kindergarten evaluation was still being used in 9th grade to define diagnoses. And my experience is that once a diagnosis is made, it sticks. Not 100% of the time, but if it’s your child this happens to, for you, it’s 100% of the time. Now, what we are told is that the child’s need(s) determine the services and accommodations they receive NOT the diagnosis. And that should be correct. But in real life there are budgets, staffing constraints and often you have to fight like hell to get your child what they need. And then you need to constantly monitor that your child is getting the services and accommodations. I’m not saying there’s anything malicious about this most of the time. It just is the way it is. But I will say again that just because it is how it is, doesn’t mean it should be how it is.

In practice, I have watched these diagnoses work like an elevator that only goes down. A kid struggles. The adults in the room, usually with good intentions and not enough support of their own, move that kid somewhere more restrictive. Once that happens, almost nobody ever moves back up.

It’s not because every one of those kids actually needed to stay in a restricted environment forever.

I think it is because moving a kid toward more inclusion takes real effort from somebody. Changing classroom placement puts more burden on the school administrators and teachers. It’s the harder choice. And if no one pushes for it, the easier path is the one most traveled. Then there is also a parent’s lack of knowledge. I say it to my clients all the time, most families only have one disabled student. So, everything about navigating the special education system is new. By the time you figure it all out, your kid is graduating from high school.

Looking back, with all the knowledge and experience you gained, you’d likely do things differently. You’d likely fight harder and advocate more. But you just didn’t know then to do that or how. There’s also the issue of time and money. Other things too. And I find it funny (not haha funny) that the school, district and staff that you pay taxes to exist will sometimes work against you to do what’s really best for your child long-term. School ends at 21 for kids. The district is out of your life forever. And what I’ve seen is the district patiently waiting people out. In the life of a school district 12-14 years is nothing. Additionally, schools and districts like to keep the parents of disabled kids fearful of what happens if they buck the system or make too much trouble. I’ve just never bought into that fear. Because I think it is so horribly wrong.

I want to flip which direction is the easy one.

Not every student with a disability going to do every single thing every other kid does. That doesn’t matter. How about we give them the chance to do the best they can. And if they fail at a, how about we give them another chance. And then another. And another. Let’s see how far they can go instead of defining their ability based on one try. Some kids need a lot of extra support, some need a little, and that will always be true. But needing support and needing to be removed from your peers are two completely different things, and we have let them become the same thing by default. The question should never be whether a kid gets support. It should be whether the support can come to the kid, in the room, next to the kids they would otherwise be growing up alongside.

So how does something like this actually work?

Start with the paperwork, because paperwork is where defaults actually live. Right now, a parent has to fight to keep their kid included, and a campus can move a kid toward a separate classroom with barely a conversation. Reverse that. Before any student is moved to a more restrictive setting, the campus has to document real, good faith attempts at inclusive support first, reviewed by somebody outside that campus, not the same administrator who benefits from an easier roster. Moving a kid toward more time with their peers should not require that same level of sign off. Make the hard path the one that separates kids, not the one that keeps them together.

Then bring in the people who actually study this for a living, because Austin has them sitting nine miles away and we are not using them. UT Austin has researchers who build the exact intervention models this would require. Sharon Vaughn runs the Meadows Center, which is one of the most respected special education research centers in the country. Nathan Clemens already tried to start an annual research partnership with AISD back in 2019, and it never continued. Sandy Magaña leads the Texas Center for Disability Studies and already studies the exact equity gaps families run into. None of this needs to be invented. It needs a school board willing to pick up the phone.

Pay graduate students to actually do the work on the ground. Kansas has a program where special education graduate students get placed in classrooms for two years with one job: rewrite the schedules and the goals that are keeping kids separated, and coach the staff on how to do it differently. Austin ISD could possibly run the same model with UT students, funded jointly, which gives the district staffing it does not currently have and gives UT a direct pipeline of trained teachers who already know our schools.

Fix the social side too, not just the schedule. A kid can be sitting in a general education classroom and still eat lunch alone every single day.

Programs built around real peer partnerships and mentorships, not just an awareness assembly once a year, have shown actual drops in bullying and real gains in reading and math scores for kids with disabilities. Build that into every middle and high school as a standard structure, not a club a few kids happen to join. And I’m not talking about caretaking here. I’m talking about the real benefit of people learning about and from each other. I’m talking about the gen ed student learning from the disabled student and visa versa.

I’m talking about making Austin ISD an incubator for creating the world we want to live in. I am talking about making real change happen right now.

And publish the numbers, both of them. Give the community recaps at least twice a year. How many kids moved toward more inclusion this year, and how many were considered for it and the campus found, with actual documentation, that it was not the right time yet. If a district only tracks the first number, eventually somebody will be tempted to move kids who are not ready just to make it look good. Tracking both protects against that, and it is the only way the public can actually tell if this is working.

None of it is impossible. I don’t know if any of this has ever been looked at or attempted. But I’m going to make sure it is.

Because I think it is what should have happened fifty-one years ago when that door first opened, instead of a system that let kids in and then quietly built new walls around them. Kids are kids. Some need more help than others. But all of them benefit from growing up together in the same room, something this district has never fully tried.