Torture in American Schools?

A recent James Taranto column in the WSJ reports that:

Last month the Government Accountability Office issued a shocking report on "selected cases of death and abuse"--not at Guantanamo Bay or other detention facilities for terrorists, but at schools for American children:

GAO also examined the details of 10 restraint and seclusion cases in which there was a criminal conviction, a finding of civil or administrative liability, or a large financial settlement. The cases share the following common themes: they involved children with disabilities who were restrained and secluded, often in cases where they were not physically aggressive and their parents did not give consent; restraints that block air to the lungs can be deadly; teachers and staff in the cases were often not trained on the use of seclusions and restraints; and teachers and staff from at least 5 of the 10 cases continue to be employed as educators.

After giving some exaples of the kinds of restraints against school children that the GAO reported, Taranto concludes:

When the report came out on May 19, we figured it would be a good opportunity to find common ground with politicians and commentators who've been complaining for years about the "torture" of terrorists. We figured President Obama would issue an executive order banning torture in schools, the New York Times would publish an indignant editorial, Dick Durbin would take to the Senate floor to declare that the teachers unions remind him of the Gestapo, and that nut who writes for The Atlantic would proclaim himself "shocked to the core."

We were going to respond by saying that although we think there are circumstances under which it is justifiable to treat terrorists roughly, all good people can agree that torturing schoolchildren is categorically wrong. But we didn't have anything to respond to. As far as we are aware, the GAO's findings have been greeted with silence by the leading self-proclaimed "torture" opponents--though Education Secretary Arne Duncan did tepidly promise "he will ask state school chiefs around the country about the use of restraints and confinement of pupils in the classroom," according to the Associated Press.

Although disability rights activitists do try to raise awareness of these sorts of things (see, e.g.:  http://tcfpbis.blogspot.com/ ), it never seems to me that those efforts have much traction in public discourse.   

My personal favorite federal district court judge issued an opinion recently finding that a local special education program violated the Fourth Amendment by requiring full searches of these students every morning as they entered the facility.  [Hough v. Shakopee Pub. Schools, 608 F.Supp. 2d 1087 (D. Minn. 2009)] My favorite quote from the opinion:

Certainly, special-needs students must sacrifice, to a least a limited extent, the privacy of medical and other information about their disabilities. And some students with special needs may have to sacrifice other privacy interests; for example, a disabled student who needs help going to the bathroom or with personal hygiene would necessarily have a reduced expectation of privacy. But all special-education students do not forfeit all expectations of privacy by virtue of being disabled. Students with disabilities remain members of the human family; they generally have the same expectation of privacy in their bodies, and clothing, and personal possessions as any other student. The fact that, say, the medical records of an autistic student must be disclosed to a limited number of school officials does not mean that the autistic student somehow gives up his bodily integrity.

Hear, hear!