Recap of ACLU-DE complaint and Deaf community pushback
At the end of December, the ACLU of Delaware, which is an affiliate of the nationwide ACLU organization, announced that they were “SUING” Delaware education officials in part because there were too many deaf and hard of hearing children going to the Delaware School for the Deaf and not getting Listening and Spoken Language (LSL) therapy.
But the ACLU-DE deleted their post after getting a strong pushback from Deaf people and professionals in Deaf education.
Sara Nović, a deaf professor and author, started a Change.org petition to call for a complete retraction of the ACLU-DE’s complaint. It has over 22,000 signatures as of today. Nović said it is false and dangerous that one must “choose” either English or ASL and that it can lead to Language Deprivation Syndrome.
Excerpt: “The binary that one must choose either English or ASL is false and dangerous, and can lead to Language Deprivation Syndrome, a preventable disorder that causes permanent cognitive damage. Deaf children deserve both languages, and the ability to develop to their full intellectual capacity.” - From Change.org petition created by Sara Nović
https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-aclu-s-dangerous-lawsuit-from-harming-deaf-children
https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17994588599384886/
Naomi Caselli, a sign language researcher with Boston University’s Wheelock Deaf Center, said “Listening and Spoken Language approaches are highly risky. Even with… therapies and early hearing technology, the majority of deaf kids do not develop age-expected spoken language skills… This is an unacceptably high gamble to make with deaf children’s lives…”
https://twitter.com/naomicaselli/status/1740396556543488335
So with these and many others’ pushback against the ACLU of Delaware, they backtracked, posting that they received a lot of community feedback about their actions and that they would hold conversations with deaf and hard of hearing community members.
Excerpt: “We're invested in learning more from this community as we review both our actions & our impact regarding the OCR complaint. We'll be reaching out to community members to discuss the concerns that were shared & ensure that our work does not in any way impede ASL education.” - Twitter(X)/@ACLUDelaware
Excerpt: “We're invested in learning more from this community as we review both our actions & our impact regarding the OCR complaint. We'll be reaching out to community members to discuss the concerns that were shared & ensure that our work does not in any way impede ASL education.” - Twitter(X)/@ACLUDelaware
So, to announce you’re suing and then backtrack is very embarrassing. Let’s look at what the ACLU-DE originally wanted to do.
To clarify, the ACLU-DE did not file a lawsuit — which involves a court — even though they said “We’re SUING!” What they did was file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR). This is an official request for the federal government to come and take a hard look at a perceived injustice. It’s up to the OCR on whether they want to open an investigation or not. The OCR gets thousands of requests every year and this process takes years.
Now, here are three main things in the complaint and a press release about the filing.
1) Claimed that Delaware education officials were discriminating against deaf and hard of hearing students by not giving those ages 0-3 opportunities to build listening and speaking skills — and by referring too many deaf children to the Delaware School for the Deaf.
2) Called Del. School for the Deaf a “restrictive and segregated school” that teaches ASL. Said that “So many Delaware children with hearing loss are placed at DSD, the most restrictive setting, as compared with children with hearing loss nationwide, is compelling evidence demonstrating a system error in placing these students appropriately…”
3) Said Delaware’s LSL services has been largely inoperative since at least 2020 and that it’s received several complaints from families of deaf and hard of hearing students about the lack of an operational LSL program in Delaware. Felt that Delaware officials were being evasive about whether it provided LSL services.
So you’ve seen some of the things in the complaint. How did ACLU-DE get this viewpoint?
It’s easy to understand if you look at who the ACLU-DE was working with in filing this complaint with the OCR. The ACLU-DE quoted two people who are a part of an organization called CHOICES Delaware, which is an organization that advocates for Listening and Spoken Language, which is an ideology that comes from the A.G. Bell Organization.
If you look at CHOICES’ website, you’ll see some statements that make it obvious that they look down on deaf schools and ASL. Their leader is Nicholas Fina, who himself has hearing loss and wears a hearing aid and a cochlear implant. Here are a couple excerpts from the website of a statement directed to parents of deaf children. See what they said.
(Excerpts from https://hearingchoicesdelaware.com/ )
— “You’re lucky you’re living in the 21st century! 30 years ago there was little that could be done to help a child with severe to profound hearing loss, other than learning sign language and attending a school in which all instruction was conducted in sign language.”
— “Thirty years ago your child would have been sent to a sign language school for the deaf where achievement levels are very low, partly because English is a second language. Sign language used for instruction is the first language. Sign language does not offer the ability to sound out words in a way that promotes spelling, reading and vocabulary development.”
This is important — Fina wrote an opinion for a local newspaper in Delaware in 2015 with the headline, “Why are expenses so high for school for the deaf?”
The op-ed criticized the Delaware School for the Deaf and said students weren’t doing well on statewide tests. Fina wrote an assumption that if these kids had oral education, they would be closer to their hearing peers. Fina wrote, “One wonders, therefore, why Delaware needs a heavily staffed, segregated school for the deaf with a capacity of 200 students in a $43 million facility.”
We can safely assume that Fina would want some of the money that is going toward the Delaware School for the Deaf.
One more thing about CHOICES Delaware — they have an otolaryngologist (ear/throat doctor) on its board, Dr. Michael Teixido. He is quoted in the ACLU-DE press release saying that the “ultimate goal is for these (deaf) children to attend schools that emphasize LSL practice and then to transition to mainstream education in local schools…”
https://entad.org/our-physicians/michael-teixido-md/
So, you see, clearly ACLU-DE was getting their information and perspectives on deaf children from this CHOICES Delaware organization. Did ACLU-DE take the time to get informed about ASL? About the benefits of sign language from an early age? Did they reach out to experts on deaf schools and deaf education? There’s no indication they did.
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The ACLU-DE is also giving out wrong information about a deaf school being a segregated and restrictive environment. The Department of Education has already said in a 1992 guidance that deaf children have unique communication needs and that if a deaf school meets their needs, it is not a restrictive environment.
Excerpt: “The Secretary is concerned that the least restrictive environment provisions of the IDEA and Section 504 are interpreted, incorrectly to require the placement of some children who are deaf in programs that may not meet the individual student's educational needs. Meeting the unique communication and related needs of a student who is deaf is a fundamental part of providing a free appropriate public education (FAPE) to the child.”
https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/hq9806.html
Quite ironically, this is actually explicitly mentioned on the OCR website, the very same organization that the ACLU-DE filed a complaint with. The information is already right there.
So that’s the recap of what has been going on with the ACLU-DE and the controversy. Hopefully, the organization can learn from many Deaf experts and professionals and refocus their energy and efforts into something that won’t be harmful to the Delaware School for the Deaf. It is one thing to ask for more services for auditory-oral therapy, but it is a completely different thing to try and sully the reputation of sign language, the Delaware School for the Deaf, and ASL as a language.