Does Special Education Correlate With Delinquency?

Does Special Education Correlate With Delinquency?

I can’t give you data, but I can give you some interpretations. I was special education teacher for over 35 years; I did 5 years of volunteer work (up to 20 hours/week) in the CaliforniYouth Authority and 2 years of part-time teaching in detention center in the 1980s. The reason was that I wanted to know how to prevent my special education students from going to jail. I worked for gang diversion project in East Lduring for year. I studied juvenile delinquency for masters program and sociology in my doctorate. There is lot of information about delinquency/criminality in socioeconomic data: poverty has high population densities, high aggression/physical abuse rates, etc. Sociologists know that “quiet” space is necessary for mental health and does not exist in households of poverty.

You’ll have to be very careful about making assumptions when reading about school statistics, because there are many factors and special conditions that go into those statistics. Drop-out rates may include those who are on the 5+ year plan but do not include those attending alternative schools, etc. Minors may be incarcerated or detention, but after certain number of absence days they are dropped from their home school enrollment. Some students the transfer for enrollment (accountability) purposes. Schools may also include those on minimum day or special arrangements (i.e., 1-2 hrs/day) to avoid drop-out figure (this fact figures into school accountability for current methods of evaluating schools after NCLB). way around laws for attending public schools is to sign up for home …

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