Small Boots, Medium Boots

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“Mom, let’s say you have a person who needs a small pair of boots and a person who needs a medium pair of boots and you have a medium pair of boots and a large pair of boots, what would you do?”

My initial reaction, “well it depends on who the people are”, was quickly countered by the more expansive response from my husband, “You have just hit open one of the fundamental dilemmas of social policy. Sometimes it’s hard to know whether to do some good for the most people, or if it’s better to completely solve some people’s problems and leave others with in inadequate solution.” And yet still it depends on whose feet are without boots.

The public education system in Massachusetts can be compared in many ways to the pair of people needing boots. Whether you consider the two bootless people to represent the financially poorer school systems and the richer school systems or the students receiving standardized instruction and the children needing Individualized Educational Programs (IEP) or the children needing honors class and those working at an average ability level, the metaphor can be played out.

Let’s consider that the students needing IEPs require medium boots and the students who receive standardized instruction require small boots. From a Massachusetts outlook, which in the public school system requires the maximum possible development of students with disability, the disabled students don’t have any footwear at all, while the other students all have at least one pair of shoes. Consequently, the education system in the state is crafted to meet the individual needs of the disabled students while leaving the remaining students to manage with a one size fits all approach—trying to put a large boot on a small foot, or worse, fitting a large foot into a small boot. In the case of disabled students and non-disabled students the cost of making the boots is not commiserate. So far more properly sized boots can be made for non-disabled students than can be made for disabled students for the same cost.

Hypothetical musings of a child are quick to capture fissures in social policy. I hope that as parents we nurture this thinking so that in time, she can be the one to find a plan to repair the cracks as well, where we have a system where everyone can get a pair of boots sized to fit.