VIOLATIONS OF THE RIGHT TO EDUCATION IN ISRAEL
Comments and Additions to the Report of the State of Israel to the UN Committee for Economic, Cultural and Social Rights 1997, Chapter 13 -- The Right to Education
Noga Dagan
The Public Committee for Education in Development Towns, Low-Income Neighborhoods and Villages in Israel
April 1998
Contents
Chapter Page
Introduction 1
Chapter I
High School Drop-Out Rates 1
The Structure of the Education System and the Problem
of Tracking 2
“Special Help” Children 3
Qualifying for Bagrut (High School Matriculation) 3
Problems Specific to Pupils of Ethiopian Origin 4
Higher Education 5
The Education Budget 8
Chapter II: Special Education
The Forced Use of Ritalin -- Damaging Children’s Health 9
Placement in Special Education – Mis-use of the Special Ed System
as a Solution to Mild Behavioral and Learning Problems 9
Statistics on Special Education Students 10
The Integration Program 10
Problems in the Placement Process 11
How Well the Special Education System Functions 13
Bibliography 14
Introduction
The Following Report is based on research done by several non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on the extent of public realization of the right to education in Israel. The included statistics are based on independent research (which draws information from different sources) and on trends which arise in field work by Israeli organizations working in education. These organizations include “HILA, The Committee for Education in Development Towns, Low-Income Neighborhoods and Villages in Israel” “The Israeli Union for Ethiopian Immigrants in Israel” and “ADVA, The Independent Center for the Research of Inequality in Israel.”
This critique and supplement to the State Report includes the following elements:
A. Alternative statistics to the Ministry of Education statistics presented in the State Report. The alternative statistics draw from a combination of research projects conducted by different bodies. There is still much information missing. This is a result, among other things, of the refusal of sources in the Ministry of Education to provide detailed information on various subjects, despite repeated requests from organizations.
B. Statistics - which do not appear in the State Report - on student achievement and the structure of the education system in Israel. These statistics indicate violations of the right to education in two areas:
· Discrimination and inequality between different sectors of Israeli society -- including among the Jewish populations in Israel -- in elementary school, high school and higher education.
· Problems concerning the Law of Special Education which are not at all addressed in the State Report, specifically the use of the special education framework as a “dumping ground” for children who have difficulties but do not fall under the definition of special needs children as defined by the Special Education Law of 1998. This includes violations of the pupils’ rights, massive referral of pupils to special education frameworks, violations of the pupils’ right to representation, illegal and incorrect placement processes, the use of physical force, Ritalin and more.
Chapter I: Discrimination and Inequality of Opportunity
A. High-School Drop-Out Rates
According to the State Report statistics, which are based on Education Ministry publications, the high-school drop-out rate in the Jewish sector for children ages 14-17 stood at 4.5% for the school year of 1995/96, compared to an 8.2% average in the Arab sector (State Report 1997: 174). These percentages do not take into account drop-out rates among younger pupils, and do not include a breakdown of drop-out rates within the different sectors of the Jewish population.
According to Professor Yosef Bashai’s 1996 report, the situation is worse: in Jaffa, 30% of Arab students dropped out of school by age 14, the average Arab drop-out rate from elementary to secondary school is 16% and from secondary to high school is 41% (Ha’Ir weekly, 13.3.98). Although this report deals with only the Arab community, it indicates a phenomenon of drop-out which is much worse than what is recorded in the State Report.
The ADVA Center report indicates an even higher drop-out rate: in 1995, 45.6% of Arab youth did not reach grade 12, compared to only 12.5 of Jewish youth. In the Arab sector, 24.5% of primary school youth drop out by grade 9. Within the Jewish sector, drop-out rates are highest in the low-income development towns: 8-10% drop out of primary school (The ADVA Center 1997:8).
According to the Israeli Union for Ethiopian Immigrants, the rates of drop-out in the Ethiopian sector are much higher than the national Jewish average: in 1995/6, 80% of all Jewish students finished grade 12, while only 55% of Ethiopian students did so. The Union estimates that in that same year, some 2,000 Ethiopian students dropped out of school between the grades of 10 and 12 -- the Union notes that this figure is three times the official statistic reported by the Ministry of Education (The Israeli Union for Ethiopian Immigrants 1998: 12).
B. The Structure of the Education System and the Problem of Tracking
In its description of the Israeli elementary and secondary school systems, the 1997 Israel State Report states that “In secondary education, students may choose between academic and vocational tracks of study. All tracks are open to everyone, free of charge.” (State Report 1997:160, Chapter 2B.)
In practice, the students’ “choice” is severely limited. The student’s range of options is subject to two factors: the student’s prior level of academic achievement and the course possibilities offered at the particular community high school. Furthermore, it is the schools themselves - and not the students - which set the standards for acceptance and select students for academic or vocational tracks. This is done by standardized testing of students between lower and middle school, despite the fact that Education Ministry rules prohibit such selection at that age.
A significant number of vocational tracks do not lead to high school matriculation, and thus prevent students from going on to higher education. In addition, many of the “vocations” taught are blue-collar skills, such as sewing and secretarial skills for girls and carpentry and car mechanics for boys. The local high schools in most Israeli development towns offer mostly vocational and only a few academic courses. According to an ADVA Center report, which is based on statistics from the Education Ministry and the Central Statistics Bureau, in 1995 some 45% of Israeli high school students were in vocational and agricultural tracks. Out of these, 38.2% were not headed for matriculation. Not surprisingly, vocational students are a minority among students who reach the matriculation exams: in 1994, they constituted only 28% of all the students who reached the exams, even though nearly half of the Israeli high-school population had studied in vocational high schools. Furthermore, the few vocational students who did reach the exams fared relatively poorly: in 1994, only 43% of the vocational students who tested passed, as opposed to 65% of the students from academic courses (ADVA Center 1997:9-10).
C. “Special Help” Students
Beginning in the 1960’s, Israel instituted a program of affirmative action for students of Asio-African descent who suffered from significant gaps in academic achievement. According to the theory of Professor Karl Frankenstein a “Special Help Scale” was put into effect in the 1970’s, by which students were rated according to their academic achievement and the ethnic background and education level of their fathers. Today this scale is applied as well to the Arab populations in Israel.
Each school receives a special budget according to the number of students registered there who are “in need of Special Help.” In many schools, these students study in separate classes with low-level academic programs. Despite the declared intention to the contrary, this pre-labeling of the students results in separation from other students and low expectations from their teachers. These conditions result in very poor academic performance – very few of these students ever reach matriculation.
D. Attaining Matriculation
The State Report, which is based on statistics from the Ministry of Education, presents percentages from 1995 of 17-year-old matriculating students in four sectors: Jewish 44%, Christian and Moslem Arab 22%, Druze 22% and southern Bedouin 6% (State Report 1997:177). The report shows a significant increase from 1994 to 1995 in the overall number of matriculating students. It does not mention, however, that a central reason for this increase was a change that year in the testing method -- namely, a switch to the “lottery” method, by which every year the Education Ministry randomly chooses three subjects in which the students are not required to test. This policy - and not improved academic performance - was one of the central reasons for the increased number of matriculating students in 1995 (ADVA Center 1996).
The ADVA Center report also mentions inequality within the Jewish sector between Asio-African populations of lower socio-economic standing and middle- to upper-class European-American populations. This report puts the percentages of matriculation at 23% in the Arab sector; 31.8% in the Asio-African sector; and 48.7% in the European/American sector.
The gap between Asio-Africans and European/Americans and between academic and vocational tracks is partially mentioned in the State Report, however, the mention is slight and incomplete. The ADVA report shows that within the Jewish sector, the lowest percentages of matriculation (those closest to the Arab rates of matriculation) were in the disadvantaged development towns: 19% in Or Akiva; 25% in Kiryat Malachi; and 21% in Sderot, compared to much higher percentages in well-established communities: 64% in Kiryat Ono and Ramat HaSharon; 60% in Hod HaSharon (Ibid). This gap is connected to the fact that the development towns and poor neighborhoods contain a high concentration of three low-income populations: Israelis of Asio-African descent, Ethiopian immigrants and CIS immigrants from the Asian republic. Most of the children in these communities study in vocational tracks, in contrast to the majority of high-income children in academic tracks.
Among Ethiopians, the situation is even worse. According to the Israeli Union of Ethiopians report, the matriculation rate among Ethiopians in Israel in 1995/6 was 12% -- much lower than the average in both the Jewish and Arab communities (Israeli Union of Ethiopians 1998:7). In addition, the Union reports that in many cases Ethiopian students are encouraged to test in Amharic, despite the fact that no university entrance exams are offered in Amharic. The result is these matriculation certificates are not worth much for Ethiopian students want to continue into higher education (Ibid: 7).
E. Problems Unique to the Ethiopian Immigrant Population
The Union report indicates problems additional to the high drop-out rate and low matriculation rate among Ethiopian students.
· Some 705 Ethiopian students in grades 7 to 12 study in boarding schools, many of which have the lowest-level academic programs in the country. Only 10% of these students attend schools with university-bound academic programs (Ibid: 10).
· Difficulties in Hebrew, English and Math: High percentages (50-100%) of Ethiopian students in middle and boarding schools have difficulty in these subjects (Ibid: 6).
· Segregation: The segregation of Ethiopian children from other children in school continues. Three institutions have segregated classes for Ethiopian children only; Nine boarding schools have disproportionately high percentages of Ethiopians (85% in each school); and many middle schools have separate classes containing very high concentrations of Ethiopian children. Educators claim that this policy creates easier conditions for the progress of Ethiopian students, but the students regard it as labeling and discrimination (Ibid: 14-15).
· Educational neglect and high drop-out rates in the Ethiopian community are reflected in the growing crime rate among Ethiopian youth. In 1996, 3% of all youth criminal cases reported by police were for Ethiopian youth, while Ethiopians constitute only 1% of the Israeli population. From 1994 to 1996, the Ethiopian youth crime rate tripled (Ibid: 13).
F. Higher Education
Higher Education Attendance in the Greater Population
The State Report details the number of Israeli students in different institutions of higher education, but it does not specify how many of these students are in academic degree programs. Furthermore, the terms of measurement used are based on the age group between 20 and 24. This provides an inaccurate picture, as Israel has a high percentage of students who - due to army service or other reasons - begin their studies at a later age. For example in 1992, only 61.2% of all first-degree students were between the ages of 20 and 24 (ADVA Center 1997: 5).
The ADVA report indicates several trends in higher education:
· There are significant gaps between the statistics given on this subject by the Ministry of Education, the Council for Higher Education and the Central Bureau of Statistics. In addition, follow-up research has revealed that the actual numbers of attendance at university are much lower than the numbers given by the Ministry of Education (Ibid 5-7).
· There is a gap between Israel’s place on the international economic scale and its place on the international education scale: In economics, the World Bank places Israel among those countries with the highest income per person. Yet in education, 1993 statistics place Israel, at 35% attendance, among those countries with a medium rate of education per person -- well below the 55% attendance average of other countries in Israel’s economic category (Ibid: 5).
· A breakdown of university attendance rates per community indicates a similar trend to that of matriculation rates: higher education attendance rates are especially low in Arab communities, where only 0.1 - 0.5% of the university-aged population attends university. Attendance rates are also low in Jewish communities which contain a majority of immigrants and Asio-African descendents: only 0.3 - 0.7% attend university. In established Jewish communities, attendance rates are high: 0.7 – 5.0%. (Ibid:5).
The Breakdown of Student Populations According to Ethnicity
Within the general Israeli population, the Arab and Asio-African Jewish populations have, on the whole, greatly inferior access to higher education. The ADVA Center report indicates that among the students who received an academic matriculation certificate in 1986, only 26.5% of non-Jews and 35.8% of Asio-African Jews began studying in university within six years, as compared to 51% of European/American Jews. When we include the percentages of matriculating vocational students, the education gap widens. Only 24.7% of non-Jews matriculate, compared to 39.5% of Jews. Within the Jewish population, only 30% of Asio-Africans matriculate, compared to 45.5% of European/Americans (Ibid:11).
Within the university population, a similar trend appears: In the school year of 1992/3, the percentage of Arab students in university stood at 5.3%, while Arabs constituted 21.7% of the national university-aged population. The percentage of Asio-African students in university stood at 24.9%, while this population constituted 45.5% of the national Jewish university-aged population. This, compared to 43.5% of Jewish Asio-African students, who constitute only 31.8% of the university-aged group. Thus, universities have an under-representation of Arabs and Asio-African Jews, and an over-representation of European/American Jews (Ibid: 17-19).
Inequality in Acceptance Requirements for Ethiopians
The “psychometric” tests - a requirement for entrance to university - are not offered in Amharic. This negatively affects Ethiopians’ chances for acceptance. These tests are offered in Hebrew, Arabic, English, Russian, Spanish and French. This issue was addressed by Parliamentary question # 2318 (14 November 1998), put by Parliament Member Shaul Amod. In response, Vice Minister of Education Moshe Peled stated that the subject entails many difficulties, among them the doubt that translation into Amharic would be worth the effort, as in recent years the number of Ethiopian test applicants have not numbered over 20 per year. The Vice Minister also stated that it would be difficult to culturally translate some of the test questions. Peled did not consider that the unavailability of Amharic tests is most likely a major reason for the low rate of Ethiopian applicants, nor did he acknowledge that the absence of Amharic translation in university entrance requirements is tantamount to covert discrimination against Ethiopians.
Inequality in Institutions of Higher Education: A Two-Tiered Higher Education System
The State Report (1997: #160, chapter C2) details the institutional structure of the Israeli higher education system. It does not detail the qualitative differences between types of institutions, nor the implications of these differences on the quality of education offered their students. The recent increase in the number of first-degree students in Israel is a result of a new policy of the Council of Higher Education. This policy essentially creates a non-intensive track of higher education -- the “college” system. In 1994, nearly one-fourth of all first-degree students studied in non-intensive academic institutions, and according to the prediction of the Education Ministry, by the year 2000, 40-45% of all first-degree students will be in “colleges” (Walansky 1996: 81, the ADVA Center 1997:10). The opening of these colleges does create educational opportunities for new populations of high school graduates, however, the location and target audience of the lower-quality colleges are primarily low-income communities. This development only reproduces the patterns of class, ethnic and national inequality which exist in Israeli education from primary school.
“Colleges” are either very expensive private schools specializing in lucrative, in-demand professions (such as law and business management), or local schools offering a first degree in Social Studies, whose main attending population is students from low-income communities. The first poll taken among students of local colleges found them to be primarily students of Eastern backgrounds, from low-income communities, who had not been accepted to university (Shamran 1995: 12, ADVA Center 1997:11).
The “colleges” amendment to the Regional Law for Higher Education (Number 10: 1995), states that “college budgets will be determined according to equal criteria, taking into account the development programs, teaching and research as confirmed by the council.” In reality, however, colleges are defined as teaching institutions and not research institutions. This means that colleges are automatically denied the research status which normally plays a big role in obtaining funding. This translates into inequality between the starting development budgets of different institutions, for example in funds allocated for libraries and lecturers. For example, in 1996 the sum of all the local college budgets totaled at 53.5 million shekels, a meager amount when compared to the Higher Education Council budget of 3.5 billion shekels, almost all of which was allocated to university institutions.
In practice, such limitations affect the level of diploma that graduates of the colleges receive, and as such informally block those graduates’ chances of further study in university (ADVA Center 1996:6, 1997: 10-12). From reports to HILA, today’s graduates of the colleges are already encountering difficulty being accepted to universities and therefore face huge disadvantages in the job market.
The Education Budget
Chapters 4 and 5 of the State Report discuss the Israeli education budget. Chapter 4 points out a consistent rise in the education budget, and chapter 5 details the budget distribution according to academic curricula in different sectors (State Report 1997:180-186). However, chapter 5 does not clearly point out the trends of inequality in realms other than budget hours. It is clear from the ADVA Report on the Education Ministry budget for 1990-1996 that despite the significant increase in budget there is no evidence of decreasing inequality, and in fact the budgets of many programs intended for schools in low-income areas are falling behind:
· “Special Help” hours for elementary schools, intended to assist weak students, dropped from 6.6% in 1990 to 5.3% in 1996. This, despite the fact that the definition of “Special Help” kids was expanded in 1994 to include kids from Arab villages. In other words, between 1990 and 1996 the “Special Help” population expanded and the budget was reduced (ADVA Center 1996:4A).
· The budget of the Education and Welfare Department (founded in the 1970’s to improve academic achievement in development towns and poor neighborhoods) was cut back in stages between 1990 and 1996. This budget was minimal to begin with; in 1990 it constituted 1.6% of the Education Ministry budget. In 1996 it was cut down to 1.1% of that budget. In addition, many other central programs are being cut back: welfare community programs, poor neighborhood housing projects, and the “30 Communities” program which gives teachers incentives to work in marginalized communities (Ibid:4-5).
· The “Long School Day” project, which between 1990 and 1995 received less than half of the budgets it had been allocated, was not at all included in the budget of 1996.
· Budgets for Arab Christians, Muslims and Druze have increased somewhat in recent years. Yet the majority of this funding was for building construction, not academic improvement. In 1991, the Ministry of Education announced the “Humash” program, intended for the advancement of education in the Arab sector. In a report from February 1996, the Ministry declares that during 1992-1995, one third of its development budget - i.e., 700 million shekels - was allocated to the Arab sector. The ADVA Report indicates that only 440 million shekels was actually spent on this program (Ibid:7).
· Today, Arab schools are included in programs which previously included only Jewish schools. Yet the Ministry of Education determines eligibility differently for Arabs and Jews. For example, in 1995 the number of “Special Help” hours allotted to the Druze sector came to 3.8% of the basic requirement, compared to 7% in the Jewish sector. In addition, many other budgets normally allocated to non-Jewish schools were “streamlined” - i.e., cut back - despite an increase in students in need of these programs (Ibid, 4,9).
· The participation of Arab schools in Education Ministry special programs in still very low. Arab Christians, Muslims, Druze and Bedouins combined constitute 20% of the Israeli population. Yet in 1995, Arab students constituted only 1.9% of all Israeli students in matriculation-bound high school programs, and Arab villages received only 5% of the entire budget of the “30 Communities” project (Ibid:8).
· The experimental pilot of the “Long School Day” project was done only in Jewish communities (High Court cases 3491/90, 3491-91).
Chapter 2: Special Education
A. Forced Use of Ritalin - Damaging Children’s Health
Ritalin is a drug in the amphetamine family, which has been deemed dangerous by the Drug Authorities. The HILA organization receives many calls a year from parents who are pressured by teachers, principals, and school psychological counselors to give their children Ritalin under threat of expulsion. The drug is used by many education personnel to improve the behavior of children with hyperactivity or attention problems in class.
Many parents report that their children suffer from severe side effects while taking Ritalin, and from symptoms of drug withdrawal when administration of the drug is stopped. In response to pressure from HILA, the Education Ministry published directives which place responsibility for administration of Ritalin solely on the family doctor and parents (Ministry of Education and Culture: 1991:18). Yet despite these directives, HILA continues to requests for help from parents who are being pressured by education personnel to administer Ritalin as a solution to their children’s behavioral problems.
B. Placement in Special Education - Inappropriate Use of These Frameworks as a Solution for Light Behavioral and Learning Problems
The 1998 Special Education Law mandates special education frameworks for students suffering from severe physical or mental disabilities, autism, or extremely violent tendencies. Yet the Israeli education system often uses these frameworks as a dumping ground for children with discipline or attention problems, light learning disabilities or low academic achievement. Overcrowded classes and unsound placement processes lead to the referral en masse of students to special education frameworks, where the academic standards are very poor and the students’ chances of reaching a matriculation certificate are nil. Once placed in special education, children fall significantly behind their peers. If and when their families do manage to get the placement decision reversed, the accumulated academic gap makes it very difficult for the children to return to regular education. In contrast to the norm in countries such as England and Italy, where families must demonstrate their need for special education, an absurd situation exists in Israel in which parents must often prove to the state that their child does not need special education.
Despite recently revised directives from the Education, many schools and placement committees continue to operate in violation of various laws. These include the Document Availability Law; the law of parents’ right of representation before placement committees, the committees’ legal obligation to justify and explain its decisions, and appeals processes. One possible solution to these violations is to place sanctions on bodies who do not follow the law. This idea was proposed to the Education Minister by HILA in 1994, and was rejected.
Following legal and political campaigns by HILA, the Education Ministry recognized the problem in the 1990’s and drafted a program whose goal was to re-integrate students with special needs into the regular education framework. Currently, the program has been minimally implemented and the Education Ministry refuses to provide detailed information on the program’s method and results.
Statistics on Special Education Students
The Ministry of Education provides the most vague and contradictory statistics on the numbers of Israeli children in special education. Ms. Ruth Penn, Director of the Ministry’s Special Education Department, reported in a letter to HILA in December 1997, that there were 21,000 students in special education frameworks, not including kindergartens. Despite HILA’s requests, no population breakdown of any kind was provided, not even according to disability. Attached to the letter from Ms. Penn was a table of statistics which showed that 33,117 children -- school- and kindergarten-age combined -- were in special education.
According to the estimates of the Youth Immigration organization, the Jewish Agency and non-governmental organizations, approximately 60,000 Israeli children are in special education (Youth Immigration and the Jewish Agency, 1995:28). In recent years we have seen mass referrals of Ethiopian children to special education. According to the Jewish Agency and Youth Immigration, 17% of the Ethiopian student population is placed in special education, compared to 3-4% of the veteran Israeli population (Ibid).
Integration Programs
In a 1996 special guidelines booklet, the Ministry of Education issued directives for a program to integrate special education students into regular education classes. The program was intended to address the mass transfers to special education which had become an alternative to answering children’s individual needs.
The program includes an integration budget for every local authority, plus the establishment of community integration committees. These committees decide on policy for taking care of special needs children, and are authorized to permit transfers of children to special education. Also established were community and regional support centers to provide special education services for children studying in the regular education system, and the outline for a personal education/therapy program for every student. Direction and responsibility for implementation would lie with the child’s educator.
According to a report by Ms. Elana Zayler, Director of the Elementary Education Department, since March 31, 1998, 371 students in special education have been integrated into regular education as part of this program. Of these, 100 were within the governmental (Jewish) religious system and 271 were within regular governmental schools and Arab schools. Despite numerous requests from HILA, the Ministry has not provided more detailed information on the sector breakdown of students, their time spent in special education, or the level of their achievement in the new frameworks. The unwillingness of various elements in the Education Ministry to provide such information does not enable proper follow-up on the implementation of the integration program.
Problems in the Placement Process
The processes of placement in special education are systematically crooked. This, together with a lack of information to parents on their rights in the education system, enables the phenomenon of unjust, illegal mass placement of children with minor problems into special education. Following are details of the most common problems in placement processes:
Violation of the Document Availability Law:
Special Education placement committees base their decisions on a series of documents detailing the child’s problems: a school report, an educational psychologist’s report, a social worker’s report and recently, a neurologist’s report. Following a High Court Decision (case 4746/93, submitted by HILA) which obliged the school to make all these documents accessible to the child’s parents, the Ministry of Education released directives on the topic in its publication of December of 1993. Despite this, and in clear violation of the law, parents continue to be invited to placement committees without being provided beforehand with the relevant documents. Parents who do not request these documents repeatedly do not receive them. This violates their right to representation and their ability to prepare and present an alternative opinion at the placement discussion of their child. Although the subject was emphasized again in a subsequent case (High Court 6259/95), HILA continues to receive calls for help from parents on this issue. This problem is particularly severe because the parents are routinely the child’s only representatives on the committee. Although the National Parents’ Organization and Student Complaints Manager for Special Education from the Education Ministry published a booklet detailing the parents’ right to receive all these documents, the booklets are not widely distributed and many parents are not informed of their rights and obligations.
Violations of the laws of Representation and Justification
In criminal case 1270/91, the civil court decided that the placement committee is a legal body. This, according to the Education Ministry, obligates placement and appeals committees to allow representatives of each child to speak on his/her behalf before the committee. This right is regularly violated in the committees:
1. Parents are often not invited to placement committee meetings – in many cases these meetings take place without the invitation of a parent, who is effectively the child’s only representative in the group. In criminal case 1270/91, three placement committee meetings took places without the parents’ knowledge. The court decided that these meetings were invalid. However, many meetings continue to take place without invitation of the parents. The problem is particularly acute with parents who are completely unaware of their rights and discover, often much later, that their child has been transferred into special education without their knowledge. Today this problem is common among Ethiopian parents and parents who are unfamiliar with the education system. Even when these parents are informed (after the fact) of their child’s transfer to special education, they are unaware of the significance of the decision, or of their right to oppose it. In other cases, parents are invited to the meeting only a few days beforehand, in direct violation of Education Ministry directives which dictate that the parents must be invited to the meeting, in writing, 10 days before the meeting date. In the Almi case, for example (High Court 6259/95), the parent was informed of the meeting by telephone 4 days before the meeting date. The parent was in possession of only some of her child’s documents, and had no time to properly prepare for the meeting.
2. Refusal to show documents: As described above, in many cases parents do not receive crucial documents on their children prior to the placement committee meetings, and parents thus arrive at the meetings unprepared.
3. Violation of the Obligation to Justify - Paragraph 9D of the Special Education Law 1988 requires placement committees to justify their decisions and inform the child’s representative of these justifications. The failure to provide this damages the ability of the representative to appeal the decision in the child’s defense and/or address future placement committees (see High Court decision 6259/95, 1090/94, criminal case 2352/929). In some cases, violation of the Obligation to Justify is accompanied by use of an illegal analysis. In the Chimberlo case, for example, a boy spent six years in special education because of the analysis of a clinical psychologist who was not recognized by the Ministry of Education. This, despite the fact that the Governmental Education Law of 1959 states in paragraph 7D that the report must be written by an educational psychologist, who is recognized as an expert by the Ministry of Education.
Suggestions for Assistance
Paragraph 7C of the 1988 Special Education Law states that when a placement committee decides to integrate a child into regular education, the committee must suggest means of assistance for the child within the regular education framework. This is crucial both for children who are still in regular education and whose chances of remaining there depend on extra assistance, and for children who have fallen behind during time spent in special education and cannot catch up without extra help. From the numbers of parents who come to HILA for help on this issue, it is evident that the placement committees are neglecting this responsibility (see also High Court case 4535/94).
Violations of the Placement Committee’s Obligation to Assemble and the “Right to a Second Chance”
Section 7A of the 1988 Special Education Law states that before a Placement Committee decides to place a child in Special Education, it must grant the child a “second chance,” i.e., an additional trial period in regular education. Section 10A of the law requires that special education principals bring each of their pupils before a placement committee every three years. Section 10C states that a parent has the right to assemble a placement committee each year to re-evaluate the placement of his/her child. In practice, none of these sections of the law are implemented, primarily because parents are unaware of these rights, and the relevant authorities - placement committees, and officials in regular and special education - do not inform parents of the law. The main victims in these cases are the children of new immigrants, parents without higher education or low-income parents who are not involved in their children’s education.
The Committee Structure and Problems of Representation, Unauthorized Decisions
1. The structure of the placement committee as defined in the Special Education Law is problematic vis-a-vis protecting the rights of the child. The official structure consists of seven Education Ministry officials and local authorities, plus one non-professional (the parent) representing the child. Authorities on the committee include: The head or representative of the education department of the local authority; an educational psychologist recognized by the local authority; the supervisors of regular and special education from the Education Ministry; a local authority social worker; a local pediatrician; and a parent representative from the National Parent Council of Special Education. The latter is meant to represent the child, yet he is hired by the Ministry of Education. We have not yet heard of one case in which a Parent Council representative met with the child or parents prior to the placement committee meeting, or attempted to inform parents of their rights. Furthermore, members of the Ministry-sponsored National Parent Council for Special Education are parents of children with severe disabilities; it is inappropriate that they represent the interests of a child whom it is not proven should be in special education.
2. Unauthorized Decisions: In many cases placement and appeals committees assemble in partial form - i.e., illegally - and their decisions are therefore unauthorized. For example, of all the placement committees attended by a HILA representative, not one committee included a pediatrician as required by law. In some cases other representatives were missing, and as stated earlier, the child’s parents are often not invited. Other problems have to do with the content of the decisions made. One example is criminal case 2352/92, in which the appeals committee ruled to increase the severity of the placement committee’s decision. The placement committee had originally decided to place the child in a special education class within the regular education framework. When the parent appealed the decision, the appeals committee decided to place the child in a school for special education. The case was then taken to court, and the judge ruled that the child does not need special education and that the appeals committee decision was illegal.
The Functioning of the Special Education System
Many questions arise regarding the way in which special education schools function. To this date, we know of no report or research on the subject. Yet reports from parents, field visits of HILA staff, and visits from Judge David Moalem have produced a grim picture, in which special education schools function more as a baby-sitting service than as schools. Children in grades 5 and 6 who arrive at HILA after spending time in special education don’t know how to read or write and have difficulty with elementary math. In most cases, these children manage to catch up academically after a few months of intensive work with a private tutor. This phenomenon indicates the need for a comprehensive investigation of the teaching methods in special education.
Furthermore, sections 19 and 20 of the 1988 Special Education Law state that special education schools must work with the parents to build an individual study program for each child. The program must include a definition of the child’s specific difficulties, specific objectives, means and a timetable for reaching these objectives, and a follow-up report to be sent periodically to the parents. It is unclear to what extent these regulations are followed, yet it is clear from parent reports to HILA that parents are not included in this process, nor do they receive reports on the child’s activity and progress.
At the base of this issue is the structure of the budgeting process. Each local authority, school and school principal receives a budget per child enrolled. This encourages special education schools to hold onto students who should not be there, for fear of losing funding. Thus the system is structured so that there is an economic interest in over-placement of children in special education.
Bibliography
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