by Ruth Teichroeb of The Register-Guard
The wiry boy slams his basketball into the concrete classroom wall again and again, narrowly missing windows and lights. When the teacher’s aide offers to buy him lunch at a fast-food restaurant, the 11-year-old finally relinquishes the ball and slumps into a chair.
“Shut up,” the boy says when the aide asks him to read out loud. “We read that stupid book when you weren’t here.”
The aide doesn’t argue. She’s only been substituting for two weeks in the special class for children with behavior problems. The regular teacher and another aide quit two months earlier when a 13-year-old student threatened to kill them. A string of substitutes has been in the class since then.
The children in this class are among more than 300 children in the Seattle School District who have been diagnosed with severe behavior disorder, which is polite language for chronic troublemaking. Across the state, there are about 5,400 youngsters who carry the label, or one- half of 1 percent of school-age children.
Students with severe anti-social behavior comprise less than 1 percent of enrollment in Seattle. They are in classrooms at 12 elementary schools and four high schools. They will cost the district more than $3.6 million this year, an average of about $11,800 per pupil, including transportation, counseling and extra staff.
But how well is the Seattle school system serving these children?
Visits by the Post-Intelligencer to several severe behavior disorder classrooms and interviews with principals, special education staff and other experts raised concerns ranging from inadequate security to a shortage of qualified teachers.
“The school systems are overwhelmed because the schools aren’t equipped to handle this population,” said Eugene Edgar, an education professor at the University of Washington. “It’s all they can do to contain these kids.”
Statistics show that children with severe behavior problems are more likely to be male, poor and black. They have typically grown up in chaotic homes, or in foster care, and a large percentage have been physically or sexually abused. Some were exposed before birth to alcohol or drugs and are neurologically impaired.
They have a high school dropout rate of about 50 percent. Once they leave school, at least one- third are chronically unemployed. Up to 40 percent of anti-social youths are likely to have criminal records within a few years of dropping out.
Under federal law, children labeled with severe behavior disorder are special education students and are guaranteed an education. Public school districts must provide special classes within regular schools whenever possible, and are expected to make efforts to reintegrate, or “mainstream,” the students.
The most disruptive of the Seattle School District’s severe behavior disorder students — about half of them — are in classes just for them, or are in treatment at a private school. The other half are in regular special education classes, or divide their time between regular classes and a resource room.
Cutbacks in school budgets and sharp decreases in state-funded mental health services have left schools with fewer resources to offer these students.
Teaching behavior disorder and other special education students typically costs three times more than teaching other students. A handful of disruptive students, who require residential treatment, annually cost the district as much as $50,000 each.
Reduced funding and inadequate planning have created a patchwork of varying services, said Dave Halbett, manager of school-based services for the Seattle Children’s Home. The 113-year- old private social service agency contracts with the school district to provide counseling to students and consultation to teachers.
“Some classes are out of control and others are well-run,” Halbett said. “It fluctuates wildly. There isn’t much planning by the school district.”
Nonetheless, Virgil Holland, the district’s interim special education director, said many of the classes are making remarkable strides with very difficult students. Of the 70 children in the district with the most extreme behavior problems, only about 20 are “bad news bears,” Holland said.
“We’re not miracle workers,” Holland said. “Schools are not going to cure everybody.”
A teacher shortage for severe behavior disorder classes has resulted in an over reliance on substitutes at some schools, Holland conceded.
Andy Lawson, principal at Indian Heritage School in North Seattle, said the severe behavior disorder class that was housed at his school until recently had been a “mess” for months.
“Kids were running crazy all over the school,” Lawson said.
The teacher wasn’t qualified and the teacher’s aide was “too physical,” he said.
Although the teacher improved with training, Lawson recommended she not be retained, and the aide resigned.
After that, a series of substitute teachers and aides tried to keep a lid on the class, but three substitutes walked out because they couldn’t cope with the students, he said.
Without adequate staff or security, Lawson said he could not integrate the behavior disorder students into regular classes on a part-time basis, as is done at some schools.
“I’m really disappointed about what happened,” he said. “But you can’t mainstream kids without the resources. . . .They can’t be allowed to disrupt regular classes.”
Hill Walker, co-director of the Institute on Violence and Destructive Behavior at the University of Oregon, said many school districts, even large ones like Seattle, don’t offer the range of services needed to meet the diverse needs of anti-social children.
“Too often the attitude is, ‘Keep them out of our hair, do a continuous field trip, but just keep them quiet,'” Walker said. “The outcomes and the programs for this population have been far below what they should be.”
Without carefully designed programs and trained staff, many of these children will become dropouts and end up in trouble with the law, Walker said.
The violence expert, who has helped set up an early screening system for troubled preschoolers, said the crucial time to identify and begin treating such children is between the ages of 3 and 9.
“If you get past the window of grade three or four, you’re into damage control and mopping up,” Walker said. “But schools get into this game of shuffling and deflecting and avoiding because they can’t afford to provide the services.”
Edgar, the UW education professor, and other experts estimate that only about 25 percent of anti- social children are being identified in this state.
“This isn’t a school problem, this is a societal problem,” Edgar said. “Either we get them when they’re young, or we pay later.”
Reprinted with permission. Copyright 1997, The Register-Guard, www.registerguard.com.