Special Education Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Special Education - Essay Example This assumption and accusation comes from the fact that schools stand to get more funding from the government if they have more special education needs students. In this regard, it is assumed that schools are more likely to label more students as special needs students so as to acquire more money from the government. However, as Freeman (2012) says, this is not only incorrect, it is also impossible. He argues that this accusation is incorrect because of various reasons. First, in any school, just one qualified teacher can have a child into the special needs status. This member of staff, who should also be a qualified teacher, and the special education needs coordinator would at the same time have to communicate and consult with so many other parties before he or she is finally able to have the child labelled as a special education needs student. These other parties include the board members, the parents of the child, the head teacher, a government body and many others. This means tha t the school cannot just decide to make a certain student a special needs student and start getting funding for the same. Secondly, Freeman (2012) argues that this claim is wrong because even if it was possible for schools to decide to label a child as having differentiated needs, this does not necessarily lead to the school getting lots of money. He argues that even after a school makes a certain student or group of students special needs students, this does not necessarily lead to the government increasing funding to the school. In such a case, the school may be required to meet the special needs of the students within the already existing resources. Again, even in the rare cases where the government may increase funding to the school, the increase in minimal and not so much as to be seen as a improvement of the students that the school gets. To counter this belief that schools and teachers are getting into the habit of unnecessarily labelling students as special needs students in order to get more money, Freeman (2012) argues that schools have over time tried their best to improve the learning environment of students with disability. This means that contrary to the belief that teacher and schools are using special education needs students to get more money, they are actually more interested in helping these students and do so with or without increased funding. Thirdly, Freeman (2012) argues that this argument is incorrect because even in cases where a school gets more support from the government for helping in taking the needs of these students with special education needs, this increased funding is usually in the form of teaching staff as opposed to cash money. In the article, he also looks at another issue that is more fundamental. The Second issue is that it is not the labelling that is important but how challenges of special students are dealt with. He looks at how the history of taking care of students with special need has changed. In particular he ar gues that teachers and school in general have turned to not caring too much about labelling but to coming up with different ways in which to assist students. He stresses that the label that the child gets is not important to the school staff, both teaching and the other members of staff because what matters to them is identifying the barriers and coming up with sensible practical solutions to help these students. Freeman (2012) stresses at least two things here. First he stresses the fact that labelling student