When each child is ready to start school, the parents have a choice. To take your child to a private or public school. To put them in daycare or preschool, or to keep them home and teach them in a way you’d prefer. These are things new parents face, especially those with disabled children. For the parents of students who are deaf or hard of hearing, there are many questions that they must face; from the language their child will speak and learn to where and how they are educated.

Over the years, the government has tried to take a larger role in how students with disabilities should be educated and it has not been met with kindness from the deaf community. It would seem to be common knowledge, but parents of children who are deaf or hard of hearing are the only ones who can make the decision on their child’s education. Parents need to understand their choices and speak up for their child’s education, especially with the government and school system stepping in in the name of the disability act, in order to keep control and push for orally speaking students, and in order to save money.

All public schools have a legal responsibility to students with disabilities. Each school must follow the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, to give their students with disabilities their best chance in any educational situation. With the question of mainstreaming, comes the question of how IDEA will be involved. Parts of the law require the best situation for learning, which would insinuate a separate school where the deaf and hard of hearing can understand better. Another part of the law states that students should have as much education with students who are not disabled as appropriate. The question for most people is what is “appropriate” and what is not. Is full-time American Sign Language instruction the best situation but lacking the education alongside the hearing students? The questions on how far to go are something only the student and their family could adequately assess.

The difficulties of mainstreaming students who are deaf are nothing new, it is something that the deaf community has been facing for a long time. In the 19^th century, there was a struggle to control deaf education. To control this, the expressive language of ASL was banned in schools. Each student who was deaf would be required to read their teacher and their peer’s lips to understand what was being taught. The schools even banned a combination of lip-reading and ASL. This complete disregard for the deaf community caused a rift to divide the deaf and the hearing. Now the words mainstream education, integration, and cochlear implant stand to threaten sign language and the deaf community as a whole. With the constant degradation of sign language and the deaf, it is very hard for parents to trust mainstream education with their children who are deaf.

Keeping up with a school for the deaf is a costly endeavor, one that many think is not worth the cost. This can be a problem, not only for the school systems supplying the deaf schools but also for the parents that do not have the money to send their child to get the best education. In North Carolina, there is a Tax Credits for Children with Disabilities law, and this gives parents 90% of their student’s special education funding, with a cap of $20,000. This is so that each parent can “choose the best learning environment for their children” without having to put their children in mainstream schooling. With so many agreeing that this should be a parent’s choice, why are we still faced with the forced integration of students who are deaf or hard of hearing?

For any kind of student with a disability, especially the deaf and hard hearing, it is an important choice of how to educate them. Mainstreaming provides the interaction with the most nondisabled, but it also throws a hurdle into communication and understanding from the deaf and hearing. The government and school systems commonly tries to decide for the parents and integrate students into mainstream schools for cost, in the name of the Disability Education act, and to maintain spoken language rather than ASL. The way that any child is educated is for the parents to decide, not the government. States should provide separate schooling for those that could be mainstreamed, but choose not to be. Without the separate schooling option, the government is again finding another way to force disabled students into mainstream public schools.