Commentary: Justice in Milwaukee

Michael F. Shaughnessy - July 1, 2009
Senior Columnist EducationNews.org
Eastern New Mexico University
Portales, New Mexico

Every once in a while, some newspaper article comes to my attention, which reassures me that there is, in fact, some justice in the world. While perusing the CEC Smart Brief, I encountered an article about the Milwaukee Public School System. Apparently during the years 2000-2005, some children in Milwaukee were deprived of an appropriate education. The judge in the case Aaron Goodstein, has ordered that an outside individual be appointed to make sure that the Milwaukee Public School system finds those children and adolescents who did not receive an appropriate education, and then to determine how to help them and to ascertain what needs to be done to “make that up to them”.

In a sense, some individuals may have tried to do things “on the cheap” and tried to practice inclusion when they should have been providing more intensive, more in-depth services. Some individuals may have been trying to practice full inclusion for certain students who needed and required more in –depth, one to one or small group instruction.

Jeffrey Spitzer –Resnick , the managing attorney for Disability Rights estimated that “ it could be in the thousands of kids” in terms of the number of children who should have received special education or an appropriate education and did not.

The judge, Aaron Goodstein wrote “The Court does not believe MPS will accomplish the task without outside intervention” , thus he ordered a special outside individual to monitor Milwaukee.

It is hoped that this judicial decision will send a message to school systems about the way they do business. It is good to see that Disability Rights Wisconsin persevered in this case. It is hoped that the children who were in school during that time frame will get the help that they need.

However, time lost can rarely be regained. Instructional time lost cannot be regained. The social skills, the academic skills, the ADL skills, the math, reading, spelling and writing skills may be difficult to regain.

There are also those students who have graduated. Perhaps they will receive a check of some sort. I am not sure how much money a student should receive for missing out on 4 years of high school special education, or remediation, or testing or assistance.  It is sad that the taxpayers of Milwaukee have to pay for the foibles of the school system. It is sad that some kids that had a chance at college, may now never had that chance. It is sad that I have to write about this in the year 2009, when most people know about the law, FAPE, IEP’s and LRE.

But it is good to see that there is still some justice in the world and I hope that the message to other schools gets out.

If you want to check out the original story in the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel, the link is below:  

http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/48735112.html

I really hope I don’t have to write more of these kinds of stories…