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Zero Reject: An interview with Anya Kamenetz' new podcast · DiveIn: Diving into Special Education's Most Complex and Pressing Debates

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From the Division of Research of the Council for Exceptional Children.
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This is Dive in, the podcast where we ask difficult
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questions about the education of students with disabilities and occasionally we
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pretend we have the answers. I'm your host, Federico Vitolo,
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professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago. So are you
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ready? Let's dive in.
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Welcome, welcome, welcome welcome to another welcome to another episode of Dive In.
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I'm Federico Weitholler, your host and favorite wannabe comedian journalist
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slash. I haven't figured out what I want to do with my life when I
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actually grow up. Today my guest is Anya Kamenetz,
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an award winning journalist, author and former education
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correspondent for NPR. She joined us to discuss her podcast from
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Understood.org 0reject the Uncertain Future
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of Special Education now, interviewing someone who
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asks questions for a living comes with a little pressure, but during
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our conversation, Anya responded to some of
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my questions, asked great questions several times.
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Naturally, I took that as an invitation to join npr,
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and in another moment when I asked her a question, she said,
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exactly. That's when I thought I was ready for
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the Ethna Clan show and started practicing. My thoughtful
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pauses I know
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still work. My thoughtful pauses still need a little bit of work, but you
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still can hear the potential. You can still hear the potential of my thoughtful passes
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and my capability to be in the ESRA claim show. Anyway, I haven't received
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the paperwork yet, but I know the ESRA must be very busy. Same thing
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for the NPR they're busy people. I'm sure the invitation
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will come any moment and you will find me in those shows very soon.
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But anyway, going back to our podcast for today,
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zero Reject Anya's new podcast arrives as the Trump administration
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works to dismantle the Department of Education and shift responsibilities
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to federal agencies. A few weeks ago, Kuna Tavalin
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helped us unpack the partnership between the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation
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Services, OSERS and the Department of Health and Human Services,
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or hhs. Education retains statutory responsibilities,
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but major questions remain about who will do the work and how students rights will
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be protected. What drew me to zero Reject is
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that connects these national policy changes to everyday experiences.
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Anya bring us into the lies behind those questions.
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Across six episodes, she follows families seeking services,
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educators trying to solve problems, and advocates fighting
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to make educational rights meaningful. She connects those experiences
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to the history of special education and asks what it will take to build
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something better. I do want to offer one brief editorial
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note. When I interviewed Anya, only four episodes were
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out. In episode five, Anya interviews Ashley
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Hakim about rethinking special education.
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Interestingly, I review Ashley's coauthor report Outmatch,
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where she advance the same ideas as in the podcast.
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I posted a link to my review of her work. In the episode's description,
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though Ashley and her co author raises important
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issues and proposes brave and interesting solutions, its conclusion
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goes beyond what the evidence establishes, that it gives
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insufficient credit and attention to decades of scholarship, debate on inclusive
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education and specialized services, debates that are at the heart of what she's
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proposing. Ashley's proposals for change also need to
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explain how they will preserve enforceable rights and specialized expertise.
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To Anya's credit, she challenges Ashley and the suggestion that
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exclusion is behind us and that we can dismantle idea,
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citing accounts of children that still are denied a full school
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day. That exchanges captures why this series
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is worth hearing. It opens difficult conversations
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that we need to continue to grapple with with regards to the teaching and learning
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of students with disabilities. And that's also what we're trying to do
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here at Divein. So while the NPR process
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of my appointment is still going on and Ezra cleaned
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his schedule for me, are you ready? Let's dive into my conversation
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with Anya Kamenet.
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Well, Anya, you have spent many years covering
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special education. What prompted zero
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reject and why are you doing it now? I mean, there was always been inequities,
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right? And you this just happened now? Yes, it's true that the,
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the stories, you know, throughout my career I have pursued stories of families
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fighting really hard for their children's civil
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rights. And I have observed how tough and how adversarial
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it can be for families who are trying to get the free, appropriate public education
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that the federal law says that they should have. What's new
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is the, the changes at the federal level and the
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announcements being made about dissolving the federal Department of
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Education. And many, many advocates kind of raising the alarm
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to say that without the enforcement at the federal level,
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while it has been imperfect, there is a danger of
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making a bad situation. Even.
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So this prompted because. Well, just to remind the audience, we have some episodes
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reviewing these with some policy analysts from the Council for Exceptional Children,
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that parts of the Office
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of Special Educational Rehabilitation Services have been moved to the Department of Human Health
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and Services and the Office of Civil Rights, which is usually
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in charge to follow up and keep schools accountable
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for civil rights violations under IDEA or ADA or
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FIFO or Section 504 has been moved to the Department
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of Justice, correct? Yes. Well, there's a, there's a sort of a joint
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task force, joint agreement. They let go a large number
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of the attorneys who were working on enforcing students rights with the
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Office for Civil rights. They closed seven of the 12 regional offices.
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And then even when you talk about the cooperation with the Department of Justice,
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we have to understand that first of all, the Department of Justice has its own
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firings and its own, you know, decimation in terms of the workforce,
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demoralization in terms of the workforce. And also too,
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the Office for Civil Rights enforces a broad range of different statutes
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that protect students. So we have title nine for sexual assault
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and gender discrimination. We have, you know, title four for racial
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discrimination. And even though a majority of the complaints that have come in have been
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about students with disabilities for. For almost the whole time that it's been
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around 60 to 70% of those complaints concern students,
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students with disabilities. But in recent times,
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since the new administration, there has been
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a big emphasis from that department, from Department of Justice and officer
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civil Rights, focusing almost entirely on cases that have to do
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with students, transgender students with DEI policies that
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are being, you know, attacked, as well as anti Semitism investigations.
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So it's not only that they've changed their administration of the office, but they've changed
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the of it a lot, which could affect the work
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that they do. Following out those complaints for students with disabilities.
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I imagine some of the things you have found your show so. So talking about
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your show first, congratulations on Zero Reject. I have listened
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to the four episodes that are out. I don't know if there is. When are
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the next ones coming up? I think there might be. I think this week we'll
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hear episode five and then episode six will be finally. Yeah, those six
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episodes. That's okay. Great. And one of the things that
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strokes me the most, one of the things that I like the most about the
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episode is that you got to talk to a wide range
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of stakeholders. You talk to people at different levels of the system. You talk
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to people in the civil rights office, you talk to parents, you talk to administrators.
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You talk to a wide range of people that experiencing these changes and
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experience special education with very different perspectives.
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As you engage with this work and you listen from the different perspectives and
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different stakeholders, what challenged you the most? Your understandings
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of special education that you priorly had. And now you'll hear all these
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different voices and something challenged. That's such a wonderful
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question. I think that what I'm still sitting with as
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a paradox is the split between the
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incredibly good intentions of making sure that education is
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a civil right that must be protected under the law and
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the outcomes we often see where there is so much of a
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fight to get students identified. There isn't always access to
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the kinds of services that would actually enable them to reach what
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they need. And then there's, you know, there's a disconnect in terms of who
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actually gets identified because we have a lot of students who don't necessarily
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meet standards for being able to read and write and do math,
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for example, but they don't all get the designation of special education. So I'm left
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kind of wondering whether, you know, and, and as some of the,
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the critics of the system ask in the podcast whether we're giving too
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much of the emphasis and the energy in the system into identifying
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students and to going through these adversarial processes of,
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of getting them what they need, rather than taking a
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step back and saying how could we design the system to meet more students needs
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from the get go. Right. Because I think about the analogy of,
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you know, if you think about a student, let's say you have a health issue
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with your child, right? And you go to the, and you say, these are the
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symptoms that we're having. The doctor says, okay, here's a prescription and here's the treatment.
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But if you make the analogy to the education system, oftentimes what happens is
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you go to the, you go to someone, you say, this isn't working for my
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child. And the answer is, it's fine, wait a while, it will
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resolve. And they're resistant actually to giving you the services
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that you believe that your child needs. And then there's a phenomenon that's
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sometimes called wait to fail. Right. If we did that in the doctor's office,
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we'd be having, you know, wait to go to the emergency room. Oh, you have
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a cold now. But it's not until you get the flu that we're actually going
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to give you some treatment. So you can see how it's kind of a backwards
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model. And why can't we have a system that is meeting everyone's needs without
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this fight and without this adversarial nature? Yeah,
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that's great. That's something that we've been struggling with since the inception,
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I think, of special education going back to 1975. I mean, there were being critics,
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I mean, I see some critics, some critiques that are being co opted
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right now by certain groups in society that are trying to dismantle
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maybe special education or trying to move it to a more choice base,
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put down, push down the accountability to states kind of model.
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But those critiques have been even within our field, right? We have a
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field that it's also divided as special education people think it's one thing,
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but it's actually we have our factions within the field, like Eddie Field.
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We had people, you know, more thinking about in those terms. It's like,
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why do we have to identify to serve, why we don't do more universal
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systems of support that I can acknowledge the needs and
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the educational support needed for different kinds of students and provide that. But then
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we have also, which rightly so, and I understand why,
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but there's another faction within our, our field say no, no,
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if we do that, all our funding and money that is
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protected within special ed is going to get, get commingled with all other funds
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that's going to be spent in many other ways that may not serve,
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particularly those who have more severe needs.
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Yes, I, I absolutely acknowledge that tension and thank you so much for bringing
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it up. But we have to understand that the changes that are taking place right
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now within the Department of Education are coming from a very specific
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place that is not necessarily honoring the legacy of civil rights.
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So, you know, I, I got a chance in the podcast to speak to Jonathan
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Butcher, who is one of the authors of the education sections of Project 2025.
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And this has been essentially the administration's blueprint
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for what's happening across every policy domain.
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Asked him point blank if he believes that public education should exist at all
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public schools in America. And his answer was really evasive.
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You know, he said many of you remember that moment in the
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podcast, but he said basically it would be very difficult to dismantle it,
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not that it would be a bad idea. So he thought
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it was more, more of a hassle, a hustle, sorry to dismantle it.
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That actually was not a good idea. It was like, oh, it could be too,
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too much work. There is no point to do that right now. And I think
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what their view might take is that their
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expansion of school choice through expanding school choice does not have to deal with
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the dismantled part of public education because slowly it's
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going to be like the frog that is being on the hot pot. Right?
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You don't understand. You're burning until it completely.
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It's boiling. Well, that's exactly right. And I mean, I just want to point out
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that not to diminish what you're saying at all, but school choices is their euphemism,
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right? I mean, everyone likes choices and choices are great and, and certainly students
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with, with different disabilities and needs have deserve options.
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But what they mean by school choice is privatization. And what they mean by privatization
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is withholding Funds from the public system. And when that happens,
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private schools are not required to accept our students with
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disabilities. They're not required to offer a free, appropriate public education. Without the public
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in free, appropriate public education, there's very little vision
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for meeting the needs of students. So that is the defensiveness
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that comes in when people start talking about universal design for learning or,
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you know, making schools better for all students. I believe
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there has to be a way to thread the needle on this, but not by
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giving up students rights. Yeah, no, totally. And we know that
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for decades of research that we know private schools totally struggles to
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serve students with disabilities, even much more so than public schools. They don't
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have the services, not the specialists, not the capacity to recruit special education students,
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teachers. Same things have happened even with sort of public schools
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like charter schools. We have decades of research looking at not all
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charter schools, but a large majority struggling to serve
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those who have more severe needs. And there are some changes on the charter
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section, I know that. But still the proportions, if you see still the
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proportions of students with disabilities in charter schools and public schools are
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quite lower in charter schools, particularly those who demand more extensive support
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needs. And the same things happen with Catholic schools too. When you look at the
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research on Catholic schools, they are struggling. And as
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you say, once you go to a private school, those civil
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rights protections doesn't follow you anymore. Particularly if you go to a
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Catholic religious schools that may even be not required
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to follow AADA because of religious exemption. Yes,
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yes, exactly. So, yeah, so it's a really complicated
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point. And the reason that the title of the podcast is Zero reject is because
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that might be the most important fundamental principle in the law.
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A school of choice is a school that has the ability to reject.
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Yeah, and that's. That's exactly the problem.
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Absolutely. You know, one of the things that strokes
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me also about the. Your show is like, because you talk to
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different points of views, different stakeholders. I think these, those different stakeholders
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has also different views of what it means equitable or a just education
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or an equitable or an effective education or
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a quality education. I see different stakeholders bringing. With their perspective,
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they're defining that in different ways. And I think that brings tensions.
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Did you find that in your show that there are different perspectives or that people
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have different ideas of equity? Yeah, different ideas of equity. Different people.
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That interview had different ideas of what it was, let's put it what it was
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good for that particular child. Well, it's certainly true that people
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have. People can disagree about what is the best for a particular child.
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I think that the most poignant or emotional contrast comes when
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you talk to a parent. And the parents I spoke to, without exception,
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they want the best for their children. They want. They. They want their.
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They believe that their children deserve to be seen as having infinite
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potential and not being limited by whether it's a diagnosis or
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an identification or a genetic background or class or
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race or anything. They want their kids to be seen as someone of infinite possibility.
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But that desire which I share as a parent comes up
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against the reality of limitation, limited resources, limited time.
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And the really hard one, I think the one that feels hard to
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me to hear about but also maybe feels like it can be addressed is
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attitudes. So students for teachers and
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administrators. Too many times parents told
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me they heard a teacher or administrator say your child is stupid, your child is
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bad. Oh yeah. And that should never happen.
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Those are, those are limiting beliefs. That's ableism.
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And those beliefs and those attitudes can be overcome with
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a growth mindset if you have coaching and you have the right kind of edu.
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I believe in education for educators as well. And I think that focusing
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on that part of it because the negative self talk comes into the child's mind
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and as a very young age they start to internalize that. And that
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is limitation. Limiting. Limiting. So yeah,
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no, absolutely. And not only they're teaching that student
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about internalizing those feelings and thoughts that are hidden from astols,
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but they're also teaching the other students in the school. Right. Where is the
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position and identity of that particular student? Right.
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Maybe not willingly, but they are teaching ableism to
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the other students of the schools and putting
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themselves in that contradiction of trying to help the student. But as I say,
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also having those prejudices.
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That brings me another question. One of the most
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fascinating tensions that I found in Zero Reject
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is that how the characters
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of the show, for example, Alison described fighting to
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have her children's needs recognized. Karina describes trying to meet students
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needs with an overwhelming workload. Karina was a teacher. So we have this parent and
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a teacher teacher. A parent who's trying to fight for services. A teacher who is
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like overwhelmed by all the work that she has. Every year has more
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like a bigger caseload, IEP caseload.
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So it seems that we're putting parents and
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teachers in situations that they become adversaries. And I
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feel that was very well reflected on the show. Thank you. I mean one
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of the things I regret about the show is that I wasn't able to speak
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to a teacher and student pair. I mean I did so Karina
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in Fact, I should rephrase that. Karina, in fact, is the teacher
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at a school where I did talk to the mom, Christina, so that's in Denver,
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you know, so that, that little boy got, because of his successful office
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for civil rights complaint, he got transferred into a much better fit school. And this
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is his, his school. But, you know, when you, when you hear Alison's saga
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and the amount that she spent fighting with two kids with special needs,
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it was very hard because, I mean, for example, she reported on this moment
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where she was in a, in a, in a, an IEP
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conference, and the teacher said to her, according to her, your kid just can't learn.
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What am I supposed to do? Yeah. And you know, and she clapped
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back, as she says, at the teacher, and there's, there's more to it that we
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didn't put into the podcast. But, you know, it was very emotional moment and I
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couldn't, I couldn't speak to that teacher because the schools, you know, FERPA and other
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things, they don't make the teachers necessarily available for that conversation. So I
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only could go and talk to, you know, another teacher at a different school to
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get that perspective. But you really do want some reflection on those moments.
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And I mean, I think, you know, understanding that this is your day in,
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day out, and you have 30 students like this and you see them all the
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time. But also it's not helpful to have that kind of attitude about a child,
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let alone to verbalize it to a parent. So, yeah,
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it's, it's very, it's really unfortunate because these are the people who are supposed to
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be working together for the best interests of children, and if they're pitted against each
20:48
other, it's, it's going to waste that energy. Absolutely.
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You know, did your series leave you thinking that
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we need stricter accountability supports or different ways to
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deliver and think of the teaching and learning of students with disabilities?
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I mean, I think we need both. Right. I think it's sort of a,
21:07
it's sort of a false choice because on the one hand, you need things to
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work better within the schools. And I think that would, that might be the
21:14
area I would look to first, is really thinking hard about the interventions we are
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offering because it doesn't do any good to fight for a better
21:22
placement for your kid if the better placement doesn't exist. So understanding
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that, you know, what needs to be available for different kinds of kids and making
21:32
sure that it is available, I think that's probably the baseline. And that also has
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to do with hiring and Support. Right. So there's
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a deep connection, I believe, between the burnout that is reported by special educators
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and paraprofessionals and their lack of access to,
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you know, correct supports and also the mindset.
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Right. So I learned a lot by talking to Stephanie Cozy, who is a coach
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for teachers, because she says she really has a growth mindset with those teachers and
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she makes sure that they have the support that they need for them to become
22:03
better. Because if you have a teacher sitting there saying your child can't learn,
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you know, they're not in a growth mindset. They're not really approaching the job,
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believing that it's doable. And of course you're going to experience burnout if you think
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you're coming to school every day with a room full of kids who can't learn.
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So we need to support. But then on the other hand, we absolutely
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need accountability because I firmly believe after doing the research
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for this podcast, that children's civil rights are being violated every single day in this
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country. There are coast to coast. There are schools that are not providing
22:31
what students need and what they not only need, but are entitled to.
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Absolutely. You know, teachers are. And teacher training in particular
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is an interesting topic. I think it's highly related to this. 0 reject,
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of course, cannot do embrace every single topic in
22:48
special education. But teacher training, I think is highly related to this. I mean,
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if you think about a lot of general educators that goes into the classroom that
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will have students with disabilities in their classroom have very little training about inclusion
23:00
of students with disabilities. If you look at university programs around
23:04
the nation, I would dare to say most of them maybe have one,
23:08
maybe two classes separate from their curriculum.
23:12
How to include students with disabilities with mostly those classes are understanding
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the disability of the weak. Unfortunate. And then special
23:21
education teachers, I mean, we are. Well,
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special education teachers are completely, not just under resourced, but also schools
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have a huge shortages of people with the expertise. I mean,
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there's a huge amount of vacancies that are not able to
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to being fulfilled every year. On regards to special education.
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Yes, but you also talked what you mentioned to
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Jonathan Butcher from the Heritage Foundation. I was very surprised that he answered
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the phone and contacted you. I don't think if I call him, he's going to
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answer. But the interesting
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thing is probably you and him agree on the problems,
24:03
I think. Yeah, but the solutions are completely
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different. Why do you think that is? Well, I think it comes down
24:12
to ideology. Right. So it's a baseline test of whether you
24:15
think the public sector has a role to play in providing public goods
24:19
like education or if you only believe that the market can do it.
24:23
And so, you know, I understand the frustrations, of course, and I,
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I'll say this as well. You know, I do feature in the podcast the story
24:30
of a family that goes to a private school that's very specialized,
24:33
and it seems to be the best option for them in that situation.
24:37
It's kind of a rare situation. It's a very severe form of dyslexia.
24:41
However. So it's not that I don't think there should be private sector innovation or
24:44
private sector choice, but if you, you know, it's really. Do you, it comes down
24:48
to, from the dialogue with the Heritage foundation, do you believe in strengthening
24:53
the public sector or do you believe in abandoning. Abandoning it? Yeah,
24:57
yeah, absolutely. And it seems there's been a strong
25:01
agenda, I think, from the 1980s to try to privatize and
25:05
try to dismantle public education and rely
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on a private system. And this is
25:13
related to my other question, because all these stories,
25:17
I mean, like Zero Reject, the stories in Zero reject, where stories
25:21
about exclusion, inequities, I mean, we need to come into lie, right?
25:25
We need to bring them to light because there are students who are not being
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served and as you say, their civil rights are being violated.
25:32
But there is a tension there, I think, because those stories
25:36
are also being used to argue against public education.
25:40
Right? I mean, if you think about your conversation with
25:44
Jonathan Butcher from the Heritage foundation, he used those stories,
25:47
I mean, those think tanks, those advocacy
25:51
organizations use those stories to then say, well, see, it's not
25:55
working. We need to send them to, we need to use the private sector to
25:59
deliver those services. So how do you navigate those tensions as
26:03
a journalist trying to bring these inequities and
26:07
violations of civil rights to light, but at the same time knowing
26:11
that that message can get co opted to put
26:15
forward a set of solutions that you will not, probably you will not agree
26:19
with. It's impossible to have full control over the stories
26:23
as they're, as they're, you know, once they kind of escape the production.
26:28
But I, I hope that by presenting the totality of the
26:32
system, we can start to understand its values. So the reason that we started
26:36
with the federal enforcement of civil rights is to make this baseline point
26:41
clear that the reason that special education exists in this country is because
26:45
coalitions of families over generations fought at the
26:49
federal level, in state court, in the Supreme Court, in order
26:53
for this to be guaranteed. And the, the mechanism for guaranteeing a civil right in
26:57
this country is federal law and to a lesser extent state law. Without that,
27:01
you don't have anything. And so in the private sector, these guarantees
27:05
don't exist. And as much as we are, you know, pointing to the failures
27:09
of the public sector, if it weren't for the guarantees, there'd be no basis to
27:12
complain in the first place because before the law was passed,
27:16
what is now Idea 1975, it was completely legal for public schools
27:20
to deny entrance to students that they considered ineducable.
27:24
So, you know, you might not be able to defend the performance
27:28
of every public school in every case. And I, I'm not
27:32
in that position. But you, you have to understand that there is a structure
27:36
here that we would lose a lot if we walked away from.
27:40
Absolutely. And that has a flip question or a
27:43
related question which is have you find or is CDRO rechecked
27:48
in the last episode will highlight some public schools
27:51
that are doing a great job serving students with disabilities because I
27:55
can guarantee you that I know they are there. We train teacher at the university,
27:59
we work with schools, we have grants and partner with schools to help
28:03
them out. And I know there is some stories
28:07
like yours in Zero Reject. There was a lot of good stories and a
28:11
lot of good that is being done to students with disabilities within special
28:15
education services and inclusive services. And parents are also very happy what they're
28:19
receiving. Are we showing some of that in Zero Reject on what's coming up?
28:23
So in episode five, we sort of had the flip because we have a family
28:27
that the woman, the mom, considered herself an education expert.
28:31
She was an education policy researcher. She put her child into a
28:35
very high end, appealing private school with a lot of outdoor time and unstructured
28:39
playtime. And her child was diagnosed with severe learning disabilities, lost a
28:43
lot of ground. And so she, she went into the public school system because she
28:47
came to understand that the public school system was the only way that her child
28:50
was going to get the services that they needed. And now
28:53
that that child is in a school that is a public school,
28:58
a school of choice within the public school system that is absolutely specialized and
29:02
absolutely the right setting for that child. So there is that example
29:06
and I wanted to make sure that I showed both sides of it because that
29:09
was a person who considered herself an education expert but really
29:13
had never given any thought to special education until this happened
29:17
to her own kid. Well, that's great. That's great that we highlight in good stories.
29:20
I think that's, that's very important, particularly with the kind of debates that are
29:24
going on right now that we highlight that yes, there are some struggles and
29:28
there are some challenges and there are stories in in that you highlight 310
29:33
reject where civil rights have been violated. But there's a lot of good
29:37
stories to highlight to show that there
29:41
is a lot of benefits to how public
29:45
schools are working. So we always
29:49
like to finish our interviews with dreams and hopes.
29:53
We ask our interviewees to help us to dream
29:57
big. What would you like to see in five to
30:01
10 years regarding the teaching and learning of students with disabilities?
30:05
I am excited and interested in the conversation about
30:10
changes to teaching and learning that are evidence based that are beneficial
30:14
to all students. I think that there's a lot to learn not only on
30:19
the basic skills side but also on the behavioral side. And it's
30:22
benefited me to learn more about the ways that special educators approach
30:27
their teaching and learning and approach child. I think in the age of AI
30:31
and you know the choose to what is the
30:35
human contribution in society generally we have to more
30:39
understand that who we are as human beings and how we show up is the
30:43
basic line of our contribution. And I think that leaders who are civ
30:47
and caring and see the best in every individual can
30:52
really teach a lot of us about that. Well, thank you very
30:55
much and for ever since you don't Reject sponsored by Understood.org
31:00
what are you waiting for? Just go and listen to it. Thank you for being
31:03
with us. Thank you Federico for having me. It's a great conversation.
31:10
Thank you for listening to dive in. I hope you
31:14
learned from this episode as much as I did. Please help us
31:17
to spread the word about the show. See you next time.