Exactly. This "open to all" thinking is just strange to me but it might be because I see "special educational need" as anything outside of the central 2 standard deviations.

This strikes me, therefore, as inherently about as silly as a group of people arguing that their insurance companies should cover a seeing eye dog because they happen to like Golden Retrievers a lot. (Come to think of it, there are people who like dogs so much that they see no real harm in falsely calling them service dogs. {sigh} Nevermind.)



It's not a "need" for a some of the people rushing to the front of the line. The reason that they are doing this is that there is an arms race in terms of college resume-building. This problem (mostly) wouldn't exist on this scale if not for mediocrity pushing up from beneath and high-pressure perfectionistic standards pushing DOWN from on high. Er-- at least, there wouldn't be such an issue if regular classroom settings were doing a reasonably good job (as noted multiple times within this thread).

What makes it wrong is when there are people who truly DO need the services, and when there is limited availability.

Someone who doesn't NEED one shouldn't get to elbow their way into the line for a service dog, no matter how much they like the idea.

Only, obviously, with the added status that some of the parents are clearly after here. I realize that most parents of bright-not-gifted or even relatively average/NT kids don't see their actions in that light. They really are thinking "where's the harm?"

But when you look at what is actually taking place in secondary classrooms, this is precisely the kind of thing which is driving "AP for all" and watering down those classes into an exercise in endurance rather than genuine rigor, and AP FEES that make it pay-to-play to land in those classes to begin with. Talk about double jeopardy for low SES and high ability students... because they are still 'better' than the alternatives at a lot of places, and there IS no GT placement at all outside of them for a huge percentage of high school students.

So yes, putting an NT 16yo high school sophomore in a seat next to a HG+ student in AP Literature does impact the high ability students. It lowers some of the level of in-class discussion, it forces the teacher to either lower standards or create MORE assignments that are 'easier' to manage (or deal with unhappy failing students and their parents)...

NOT every student is "elite" material-- no matter how much they or their parents wish it were true, and no matter how much work they are willing to do to make it so.

YES, schools should do a better job for all students. I don't see PG students as more deserving of appropriate education-- not in the least. I think that NT kids are just as deserving. What they don't "deserve" is placement into educational settings that don't really offer them a lot of benefit because they are intended for children who are HG/HG+.



Bottom line, that's like me calling my dog a "service animal" because I like the way it SOUNDS, and I'm entitled to call her whatever I like, and how dare anyone point out that I have no real need to bring my dog to the movie theater or library with me... It's obnoxious entitlement on my part, right? It doesn't directly impact my neighbor who really DOES have a service dog... of course not. But it does do so indirectly by making people more suspicious of the terminology. Words do mean something, after all. If I misappropriate special titles or services and then 'adapt' them to suit myself... that's wrong.



Not much distance from that to reading a couple of comic books and calling it a "doctoral dissertation."

The upshot of all of this is that when parents are allowed to redefine what education means (so that it's easy enough for their kids to hit the ceiling, they might well be VERY strident about wanting that ceiling LOWER) then it's absolutely about making sure that nobody looks more capable than their own kids.


Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.