Posted on: Friday, October 5, 2001

Island Voices
Here's how 'Felix' is supposed to work

By John Mussack
Special education teacher

On Sept. 7 a confused letter about the Felix Consent Decree, "Get politics out of Felix compliance" betrayed a lack of awareness of both the consent decree and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

Its thesis was that Hawai'i's schools already comply with idea, so the consent decree should leave us alone because it imposes a much higher standard than idea does.

The writer's logic was that IDEA only requires "progress" in individualized education programs (IEPs); but the consent decree requires 85 percent by school complexes in an arbitrary assessment tool, called "service testing." I think he was implying that if service testing scored only 10 percent, at least that would be progress, and therefore satisfy IDEA.

Let me try briefly to straighten out some other misconceptions:

• IDEA explicitly states that progress in IEPs is not required, but only a good-faith effort.

• IDEA requires three things in IEPs: the general curriculum, integration and remedial training. The Department of Education fails in all of these for most students. (This is my personal observation, not Judge David Ezra's.)

• The consent decree (as well as IDEA) covers a lot more than IEPs; and it requires two things: obeying the law and service testing to demonstrate obeying the law.

• Part of the consent decree says to computerize records, as the writer correctly points out. But this will make everything easier — not harder, as he thinks. The 184 data-entry points are arbitrarily required by the DOE, not by the consent decree or IDEA.

Douglas Houck, until recently the DOE special education head, testified to the Legislature on Aug. 20 that he believes computerization is the single most necessary change in order to jump-start obeying the law.

• The running-around-in-circles that the writer and the rest of us teachers are doing is not "driven by Judge Ezra's rulings," as the letter says, but by the chaos in DOE. Like the writer, I too have heard DOE administrators falsely blame the consent decree for all our troubles, whipping up resentment in teachers and the public alike.

But in truth, Judge Ezra is doing his best to simplify and streamline the long-overdue beginning of a decent education for the children of Hawai'i.