The Neglect and Exclusion of Children with Learning Differences
Schools often ignore learning differences in favor of spending resources on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Today’s article was written by two warrior moms - Amy Gonzalez and Andrea Gross, before they joined the Undercover Mother National Cabinet. They have since left their former school and have been in the press.
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6255003428001#sp=show-clips
Before meeting Amy and Andrea, we followed their story. When they spoke, we felt like we were hearing ourselves speak. As a result of their heterodoxy, they have been grossly maligned and savagely smeared in the public, often cast dismissively and hatefully as “right wing,” “far right” or part of a right wing agenda. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our fight and our collective transcends the partisanship of any individual Cabinet member or member mom, which includes bona fide progressives, centrists, libertarians, Democratic Party donors, and even former Democratic Party insiders. Like the rest of us on the Cabinet, Amy and Andrea are just everyday moms who love and care about what’s right for their children.
Here, Amy and Andrea address a very important and often overlooked issue - that of learning differences. They are modern day heroes. Humble but strong, we all hope to mirror the bravery, empathy, and passion they exemplify.
What is the price of Equity?
A mother will do nearly anything to protect her children. Of all the different species, elephants may have the strongest maternal instincts. A herd of female elephants will travel together in a circle with the youngest calves in the middle to protect them from outside predators. When one elephant is orphaned, the herd will adopt the orphan and protect her as its own. Elephants are not the only species biologically programmed to go to great lengths to protect their children.
We, too, will do everything we can to protect our children. We are two mothers with middle school-aged children who attend the Columbus Academy (hereinafter “CA”), a private school tucked away on a secluded campus in central Ohio. Our children are smart, curious, engaged, and talented. They also have learning disorders similar to millions of other children across the country. With our children in private elementary school, we began experiencing frustrations with the educational accommodations offered by the school for children with learning disabilities. We made simple requests like extended time and a quiet place for test taking to accommodate our children with ADHD, Inattentive ADD, dyslexia, and other common learning disabilities. Our requests were marginalized and largely ignored by the school. Parents have been incorrectly told, “The school has no legal obligation to accommodate learning disabilities because the school does not accept Federal funds.” One mother reports her child diagnosed with dyslexia was denied the opportunity to skip gym in order to receive the Orton Gillingham tutoring she required. The parents personally paid for an Orton Gillingham tutor; however, their child was denied access to the building including the library to conduct her online tutoring sessions. Not to be defeated, this mother improvised. She drove her SUV around searching for a good WIFI spot, while her daughter hid under a blanket in the back, fearful she might be spotted by her classmates participating in PE outside.
Not an ideal way to learn to read.
When addressing learning differences with the school, many have been told, “Maybe this school just isn’t right for you,” and others have shared they were told their child will not make it at this school. In an affidavit, a teacher suggested including, “supporting different learning styles into the school’s Diversity and Inclusion statement.” The teacher said, “she was raked over the coals,” by the Head of School and was told Columbus Academy would never say such a thing. This teacher felt threatened with losing her job, and recounted to a parent, “I need my job so I cannot press the issue.” We were surprised yet saddened. How could this be the response from a school that advertises how it embraces different learning styles?
So, we began to organize. We asked questions, pushed back, leaned in, and forced our voices to be heard by the school administration. In organizing our cause, we grew louder, and began hearing from parents, students, teachers, alumni, and other community members. We discovered many community concerns with the school, spanning across political bullying, racism, intolerance, among other serious issues. We started a group, called the “Pro CA Coalition,” in order to coordinate our efforts and push for transparency and change from the school. Our kids were suffering, asking for psychological help, being diagnosed with Anxiety disorders and depression. After hearing these heartbreaking accounts and knowing the devastating life-long consequences of the school’s reprehensible unwillingness to address neurodiversity, we had to do something about it to positively impact change.
The school administration, for its part, worked hard to suppress our cause. But we were too big to go away—by now we had more than 180 parents supporting our group. The stories we heard were impactful, often tearful, and they gave us the courage to continue. We collected Affidavits from dozens of parents and teachers, so that we could clearly demonstrate to the school the gravity of our claims. Good teachers had been forced out. Good families had left.
“Why not just leave,” or “why pay $30,000.00 for this lack of education?” Others have commented, “public schools would have better resources for this sort of thing.” To us the reason was simple and obvious—we love our school and community. We know it can do better, and we decided to do our best to help it try.
We started to dive deeper, and we began questioning how many resources and how much time the school was dedicating to popular progressive social justice causes, while ignoring the serious issues staring it straight in the face. No learning specialists were provided in the lower school, yet the size of the diversity department was doubled. We queried the credentials of the reading specialists and were left in silence. Mandatory professional development was Kendi’s teachings, history of the police, and exercises dividing faculty by race. Every email and meeting from the school was loaded with diversity and inclusion language, critical race theory, pessimistic activism, even “defund the police” fundraising emails sent to the faulty and community—the school could certainly talk the inclusive talk. But, ironically, the school had been systemically evicting a diverse group of learning-disabled students standing right in front of it. Was this problem simply a disproportionate allocation of school resources? Perhaps so. Some of the damage could not be undone. Families had already left, under auspices their child lacked the intelligence to remain at the school. Nothing could be further from the truth: these children were brilliant and talented.
How had the school missed the mark so badly? Was this a unique problem facing private and elite educational institutions—a cost of our privileged education? For we know discrimination and exclusion of children with learning disorders harms not just the children and families who are marginalized, but also the students who remain. Of course, we had experienced first-hand damage to our children’s confidence, self- esteem, and importantly, their love of learning. But the discrimination also harms the children who do not suffer from common learning disorders, for it builds a false reality of “learning perfection” that will not last in this life. Our children will grow up, attend university, make friends, take jobs. They will eventually come across diverse people in many different settings. And they will have lost the benefits of being around and learning with others from a different neurodiversity background than their own. Imagine sending your child to a school that could not reasonably accommodate Albert Einstein (dyslexia), Vincent van Gogh (bipolar), Thomas Edison (hearing disorder), Simone Biles (ADHD), or Nikola Tesla (autism).
For raising our voices, we have been mocked, ridiculed, intimated, threatened, and harassed, all because we have challenged the traditional power structures of an elite academic institution in an effort to protect our children. One of us, an active member of the parent association, has been repeatedly pushed by another person to step down from this volunteer position because we have publicly raised potential legal issues. To our dismay, even in light of the dozens of complaints we have raised with the school, the school’s Board of Trustees refuses to undertake an independent investigation on these issues. Instead of apologizing for past wrongs, committing to progress, and taking constructive action, we hear the school has retained lawyers and a PR firm, instead focusing resources on damage control. With these actions the Board is failing its obligations to our community, and we believe the school will continue to suffer until these issues are addressed.
We will not back down, and we will not quit. The issue of learning disabilities and neurodiversity is too important for our children, the cost of equity too high. We will demand reasonable change, and we will stand with each other in a circle around our most vulnerable, until we see this change take place. They are worth it!