Do Public Schools Have an Obligation to Serve Troubled Children and Youth?

Journal article by David B. Center, C. Michael Nelson, Robert B. Rutherford Jr., Hill M. Walker; Exceptional Children, Vol. 57, 1991

Journal Article Excerpt
Do public schools have an obligation to serve troubled children and youth?

by C. Michael Nelson , Robert B. Rutherford Jr. , David B. Center , Hill M. Walker

The responsibility of America's schools for providing special services to socially maladjusted pupils has been debated for many years. Much of this debate has focused on the exclusion of youths considered to be socially maladjusted, antisocial, or conduct disordered from services available to those classified as seriously emotionally disturbed (SED). Public Law (P.L.) 94-142 and its recent amendments (P.L. 99-457) specifically excluded "children who are socially maladjusted, unless it is determined that they are seriously emotionally disturbed "(U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1977, p. 42478). However, research, scholarly opinion, and professional practices consistently have indicated that this exclusionary clause is ill founded (Kauffman, 1989). The purpose of this article is to explore problems and issues associated with the exclusion of youth identified as socially maladjusted (SM) from special education programs in the public schools (see Nelson & Rutherford, 1990, for a more extensive discussion).

Although the Eleventh Annual Report to Congress on the Education of the Handicapped Act (U.S. Department of Education, 1989) indicated that 9.1% of handicapped students being served in special education programs are SED, this population continues to be significantly underserved. Federal prevalence estimates of SED pupils have ranged between 1.2% and 2.0% of the school population, but 3%-6% is regarded as a more accurate estimate by authorities (Institute of Medicine, 1989). However, less than 1% of public school students have been identified and served in SED programs (Knitzer, Steinberg, & Fleisch, 1990). Aside from the severe shortage of qualified teachers for these pupils, the basis for this serious lack of services appears to be a chain of interrelated circumstances. First, schools are antagonized by an often resist providing services for students whose social behavior deviates considerably from expected norms, especially when their behavior patterns include acts of defiance, aggression or extreme disruption of the school environment.

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