Editorial

Abstract

EDITORIAL Residential versus Mainstream Education Since the implementation of PL. 94-142, the arguments over mainstreaming have escalated in intensity and zealotry. The polarization of the opposing camps in this dispute have blinded educators, parents and other professionals to the basic issues involved. Foremost of these is that regardless of the setting (residential or mainstreamed), deaf students deserve certain basic educational services. These obviously vary with the student, but for all deaf youth they are highly specialized, unique and expensive. Thus, professionals with academic qualifications in deafness, whether they be ardent supporters of residential or mainstream settings, are in agreement that placing a deaf youngster in a class with 30-plus hearing children and no support services other than preferential seating, notetaking and perhaps a few hours a week in a resource room with a teacher or speech therapist who has a smattering of knowledge about teaching deaf children is wrong. At the other extreme, few would disagree that urban areas serving large numbers of deaf children have the potential to offer the kind of comprehensive educational programs appropriate for a deaf student. Hence, the fundamental issue is not mainstreaming versus residential placement. It is instead a two-fold issue. First, certain basic minimal educational standards have to be guaranteed all deaf students. They should be removed from or never placed in programs not meeting these minimum standards. Such standards would eliminate the current horrors of mainstreaming described in the example, above, of a deaf student in a class of hearing students but with grossly inadequate educational support. Similarly, appropriate standards would preclude that urban areas with large numbers of deaf students could at reasonable economic cost per student provide local education. The same would be true of residential schools. Secondly, the issue of least restrictive environment must be faced. By setting reasonable basic educational standards for any program serving a deaf student, the worst abuses of interpretation of "least restrictive environment" would be eliminated. Programs that place the single deaf student in a class of hearing students without adequate support services would not meet minimal academic standards. Thus, such placement could not be seen as a "least restrictive environment " option. By establishing basic educational standards for all programs , before they become eligible to serve deaf students, a glaring omission in current educational policy would be corrected . By analogy, medical schools, colleges, trade schools and high schools for the hearing have to meet certain minimum standards to be accredited. Any educational program a veteran attends under the "GI Bill" must meet similar standards . Once minimal standards were set there would still be arguments between professionals over where a deaf student should be placed and which placement would be the "least restrictive." These arguments would reflect either or both the vested interests and the sincere convictions of the professional community. The best practical resolution of these disputed cases would be to permit parents to make the final decision on placement of their child. This process serves two purposes. First, it requires that both educational options, mainstream and residential, remain strong in order to be competitive. Secondly, it leaves the decision-making role with those who care most about the child and who must, in the final analysis, answer for the success or failure of the placement. Until these two changes are made (minimal educational standards and final placement decisions made by parents), deaf children are going to continue to be placed in grossly inadequate programs which destroy their opportunity for education and are devastating psychologically. Decisions will be based on vested interests, not the child's, and will be made by educators whose competence is not in the field of deafness. The National Commission on the Education of the Deaf should have the responsibility to set these minimal educational standards for programs serving deaf students. Meeting these standards should be a prerequisite for funding and for the right to enroll deaf students. We are long, long overdue on evaluating and improving the regulations, i.e., the implementation procedures, of PL. 94-142. The time is right and the structure as represented by the National Commission exists for this desperately needed improvement of RL. 94-142. The Profession's Loss—Dr. Norman...