Parents Of Special-Needs Students Increasingly Using Electronic Surveillance

 

 

Nirvi Shah writes at the Education Week (4/26) "On Special Education" blog about the burgeoning trend of parents of students with disabilities "fitting their kids with hidden devices to capture a day in their lives at school. Among the mundane teacher-student interactions are the sounds of slapping, taunting voices, talk about the best recipes for martinis, and selected reading from an article that refers to the inadequate size of a sexual organ." Shah continues to relate the case of Stuart Chaifetz, who "sent his son to school with a wire in February," revealing "staff calling his son a 'bastard' and telling him to shut his mouth."

 

The AP (4/26, Mulvihill) reports that the parents of a number of special-needs students across the country learned about "verbal abuse the same way -- by planting audio recorders on them before sending them off to school. In cases around the country, suspicious parents have been taking advantage of convenient, inexpensive technology to tell them what children, because of their disabilities, are not able to express on their own." The piece notes that though the practice can reveal abuse, "George Giuliani, executive director of the National Association of Special Education Teachers and director of special education at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., says that while the documented mistreatment of children has been disturbing, secret recordings are a bad idea" because they could violate other students' privacy rights.

 

The New Jersey Newsroom (4/26, Holt) reports that Chaifetz sent his son to school with a recording device "after receiving reports that his son had become prone to violent outbursts," whereupon the student "came back with 6.5 hours of tape filled with verbal and emotional abuse from his classroom aide and teacher. Stuart Chaifetz documented the tape and published it in a YouTube video." Reuters (4/26, Allen) also covers this story, noting that the district fired at least two of the educators involved in the verbal abuse. The Cherry Hill (NJ) Courier-Post (4/26, Walsh, Mitchell) also covers this story.