The Zen Reverse Red Chief Strategy
Disability systems make my life much more difficult than disability. The bureaucracies of “support” seem to be designed to make things harder and drive us to give up instead of helping our lives (or the lives of disabled people we care about) easier.
I’ve finally come up with a name for the strategy that I’ve been formulating and tuning for the past 9 years – and I’d like to thank H and V at our latest Wednesday Coffee for helping crystallize the name (you are welcome to join us… and if you can’t shoot me a note)
It is the Zen Reverse Red Chief Strategy.
Name inspired by O’Henry’s Story “The Ransom of Red Chief”.
The Ransom of Red Chief
The story is about a young boy who is kidnapped and held for ransom by two crooks. The boy’s father knows the boy is a “big challenge”, holds out, and eventually the kidnappers wind up paying the boy’s father to return him because he is so difficult.
It sometimes seems that special education programs in school districts and other disability service providers are using this strategy on disabled people and parents of disabled children:
- Every timeline is stretched out to the maximum. You can bet that if they are allowed 60 days under IDEA, you aren’t going to hear from them before Day 58.
- No agenda pre-meeting planning… and every meeting starts with introductions, then your comments (not turned into actions, but just chewing up the 1 hour and no more clock).
- Pushing you to have IEP meetings for everything.
- Only leaving 10 minutes or so at the end of a meeting to actually address the objective of the meeting.
- Overuse of bullying bureaucratic documents like Prior Written Notices.
- No documentation of dodgy actions or decisions.
- Only responding when you use formal processes.
- Excessive pushing parents towards Independent Education Evaluations (IEE).
- Reactive instead of proactive assessments.
….
The Red Chief Strategy
At least that is what it looks like on the receiving end. Instead of helping people facing challenges, everything possible seems to be done to deny, wear down, wear out, and even at the end of the day provide the utter, minimal services and support possible.
… and then require you to start all over again every year (or month or three years).
… and turn things off at the drop of a hat if every single procedure isn’t followed correctly or their are any errors in your paperwork – no matter how minor.
It isn’t service or support, it is Minimum Viable Compliance (MVC)..(not Model-Viewer-Controller for my fellow computer nerds).
Minimum Viable Compliance
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) specifies timelines and responsibilities for all parties. These requirements set a minimum standard to be compliant with the law.
Instead of a worst case ceiling, too often some school districts skate as close to the edge of the law as possible – and over the edge if they can get away with it (particularly if parents aren’t well educated, assertive, or wealthy enough to put up a fight).
The sad history of legal cases related to IDEA show how deeply ingrained this culture is – *de minimuis education standards, segregated classrooms, gross under-funding of educational programs – it should be horrific and abhorrent and shameful to see how hard, long, and at great expense states and schools fought and continue to fight against educating disabled children.
Doing Better
The engine for real change has to come from school leadership, teachers, and politicians. But, it is foolish of us to expect this to just “happen” (We’re more than 50 years into IDEA and most states aren’t even in full, basic compliance with the law, federal funding has eroded with many states and school districts using this as an excuse not to take action, but, except for isolated legal cases, parents, the disability community, and “allied” groups have done little.
Change has to start with individual action and high expectations.
If we don’t push for change for our own children – why would we expect others to?
We are just one special interest among many – no more special than others (which may be good as we’ve got potential allies)
The Zen Reverse Red Chief Strategy (ZRRC)
A step in making change happen is to take away the power of the bureaucratic “Red Chief Strategy” – we can’t stop the administrative burdens that they put on us, but we can reclaim the initiative and, perhaps, reduce our anxiety.
“Zen” is all about not letting the Red Chief strategy get you down. See it for what it is. See its shape and intent… you can’t stop many of the tactics, but you can choose to worry about them less (and plan for them where possible – such as watching timelines and summer and winter holiday breaks so that you aren’t surprised when things stall out – or make sure to get on the calendar early).
“Reverse Red Chief” is making sure you are using the rules effectively (and pushing them to follow procedures by forcing documentation – The Ultimate Procedural Safeguard.
The power of the Zen Reverse Red Chief strategy is that it works independently of what the school does… but, of course, it can’t make the school team do a better job…
More of the Better IEP Quickstart Guide:
The Disability Almanac Better IEP Quickstart Guide
Individualized Education Strategy
Building an IEP Team Report Card
The key next piece of all of this is how to get schools and school districts to want to do better… that is the real win.
