A difficult choice

The Department of Education of New York has issued a damning report on the Judge Rotenberg Educational Research Center in Canton, MA. The center is a last stop for students who have not been able to function in the normal school system. Some are autistic, some mentally ill and some are just very, very difficult to control. The school uses a Gradual Electronic Decelerator (GED) as one of its primary treatments for the students. The GED is "a device that produces a temporary, painful (but harmless) skin-sting that is produced by passing electric current through a small area on the surface of the skin for 2 seconds." It is "used only with court approval and parental consent".

Among the charges made in the report are:

• punishment is the main behavior modification technique
• the GED is used for minor issues, such as swearing
• students live in an atmosphere of pervasive fears and anxieties
• regular or special education is limited
• more than two-thirds of the people who directly care for the students at the center have only a high school education
• only six of the 17 mental health clinicians are licensed as psychologists.

A report like this is not new to the Center. It has been enmeshed in controversy practically since its beginning in the 1970s. The Center claims that the GED is better than the alternatives, i.e., psychotropics, warehousing and restraint. And there are many safeguards starting with approval by the parents and the courts. Many parents are very supportive of the Center, feeling that it saved their child's life.

New York gave the Center a good review last September. This current review, which took place in April and May seems to have been prompted by a charge made by the mother of a former student from New York. New York's reason for the change in the tenor of this report is that it was more in-depth and included an unannounced visit to the Center.

Who knows who is right here? Or what you would do if you had a child who could not be helped by the system. What does strike me is the money involved. The cost to send someone to the Center is about $200,000 per year. There are 250 students. That works out to annual revenue of $50,000,000. That's a lot of money.