In psychoeducational school, behavioral experiment for troubled child
Part two of a three-part series: Educators wanted to subject Libby Beem to behavioral experimentation in Georgia’s unique system of psychoeducational schools. A courtroom showdown would determine Libby’s fate.
Above: When Libby Beem was in the third grade, her behavior was so disruptive that a school psychologist proposed conducting an experiment to diagnose the problem. Libby was 20 months old when she was adopted from a Chinese orphanage, where she experienced abuse and neglect. *Photos by Bob Andres, except where indicated
The experiment, Ernest Whitmarsh would later concede in court, might be considered extreme.
Whitmarsh, a school psychologist in Cobb County, needed to diagnose why a student named Libby Beem acted out so much. So in a fake classroom in a special school, he would sit alone with Libby, trying to incite the very outbursts that got her into trouble – outbursts that typically led to Libby’s hurting herself.
He would prod her using the same triggers that caused her to yank out her hair, or stab herself with a pencil, or poke her eyes, or claw at her skin until she drew blood.
And, in case Libby turned her rage on him, Whitmarsh would wear protective clothing.
“One of the most frustrating things I have to deal with,” Whitmarsh said later, “is if I go to a mechanic with my car and my car is not doing the problem that I brought it there for, the mechanic can’t diagnose it. So he’s going to test certain things to see the problems happen. That’s the same situation here.”
Whitmarsh’s proposed experiment underscores the unorthodox approach Georgia takes with children who have severe emotional, behavioral and psychiatric disorders. Georgia is the only state that operates a network of psychoeducational schools that segregate such children from those who don’t have disabilities, often in aging buildings that black children occupied in the Jim Crow era. Federal authorities allege the schools – formally known as the Georgia Network for Educational and Therapeutic Support, or GNETS – violate students’ rights to be educated in the least-restrictive appropriate setting.
A recent self-portrait. When she was younger, Libby drew pictures of babies in cages, surrounded by large, menacing adults.
‘Only one track’
Libby tracks her school assignments on a large whiteboard at home. Cobb County educators wanted to send her to a psychoeducational program. “I heard it was a scary school – it was like jail,” she says. “They told you that’s where you’re going to go if you misbehave.”
Julie and David Beem already had three other children when they adopted a baby from China. The little girl they named Anna Elizabeth – Libby – was 20 months old but functioned more like a 6-month-old. She couldn’t walk yet. She still didn’t eat solid food. She had experienced what Julie Beem recently called “a gross level of neglect.”
Physically, Libby caught up quickly. But her language skills lagged, and her emotions erupted in ways that only worsened after she started pre-kindergarten.
Special-education teachers at Libby’s school, Birney Elementary, initially said she had developmental delays. But they later documented intense episodes in which Libby kicked furniture, hit and scratched teachers, and dug bloody wounds into her arms with her fingernails. She threatened suicide.
In third grade, teachers gave Libby a test that asked her to complete sentences:
When I get mad –
“I kick, punch holes in the wall, punch people.”
When I break something –
“I kill people.”
For another test, teachers asked Libby why a character in a story wanted to be alone. Libby replied, “Because her mom rose from the dead.”
When they asked what the character wanted to do, Libby said, “Die.”
The school relabeled Libby as having an emotional and behavior disorder, then amended her file again to say the disorder was “severe.” Her mother agreed to the changes, she said recently, only because school officials promised that Libby would be eligible for more therapies.
Third grade was especially difficult. Her behavior became more disruptive, more violent. By February, Libby had received 10 days of out-of-school suspension that school year, and her teachers had run out of patience. School administrators insisted Libby’s parents send her to the Fitzhugh Lee School – a part of HAVEN Academy, one of the state’s 24 GNETS programs.
“They were adamant,” Julie Beem said, “that there was only one track.”
When Beem toured Fitzhugh Lee, she encountered a boy hanging out a first-story window, struggling with a man who eventually pulled him back inside. She later learned the child was trying to escape from a seclusion room.
The Fitzhugh Lee School was part of the H.A.V.E.N. psychoeducational program in Cobb County. It was to be the site of a behavioral experiment involving Libby. Photo by Cobb County School District.
Inside, she saw a staff member holding another child face down on a hallway floor. Beem’s guide told her to step around the child and keep walking.
Everywhere she looked, Beem said recently, she saw chaos: children crying, teachers fussing – a din that would only further agitate Libby. The school’s atmosphere, Beem said, seemed “authoritarian.”
About the same time, the Georgia Advocacy Office, which represents disabled people in institutions, received a complaint involving another student at Fitzhugh Lee. When that boy, identified in court documents as “S.,” presented “challenging behaviors,” the advocacy office said, teachers tethered him with a dog leash.
The school district settled the lawsuit, and a lawyer with the advocacy office, Josh Norris, said Fitzhugh Lee stopped using leashes. But a judge sealed most of the case file. A “major factor” in the district’s resolving the case, the judge wrote, was the decision to “maintain the privacy and confidentiality of the allegations.”
The experiment
Libby with her third-grade classmates. Family photo
Ernest Whitmarsh joined the Cobb school district’s behavioral unit in 2002. He is certified as a school psychologist by the Georgia Professional Standards Commission, which regulates educators, and earned $69,598 from Cobb last year. He has never been licensed in Georgia as a practicing clinician.
One day in November 2005, at a teacher’s invitation, Whitmarsh spent about 50 minutes in Libby Beem’s classroom at Birney Elementary. During that time, he said later, she became “visibly upset” over an unfinished math assignment.
“I was mainly concerned when I saw her poke her head with the pencil and when she screamed and cried over what appeared to be a very minor situation,” Whitmarsh said.
“Things were going on pretty smoothly and she started engaging in self-injury.”
From that brief observation, Whitmarsh devised an experiment: Libby would be reassigned to Fitzhugh Lee, where Whitmarsh would set up what he called an “analogous classroom” that contained the furniture, books, computers and other fixtures to which Libby would be accustomed. No other students, not even a teacher, would be present. Whitmarsh alone would sit with Libby three hours a day, for eight to 10 weeks, trying to figure out what might provoke her into an outburst. Then he would do whatever bothered her.
He might make sudden loud noises or tell her she had performed tasks incorrectly. He might order her to complete assignments in subjects she hated. He might ignore her altogether.
No matter how Libby responded, whether she threw school supplies or struck herself in the head, Whitmarsh would simply watch, he said later. A colleague in the next room would take notes on Libby’s reactions. The notes could be used later to develop a treatment plan.
Ethics principles published by the National Association of School Psychologistssay such assessments should rely on techniques “that the profession considers to be responsible, research-based practice.” School psychologists also should take into account a student’s “disabilities, cultural, linguistic and experiential background,” the association says.
Libby’s parents first heard about the proposed experiment during a meeting at the school. Julie Beem said that’s when Whitmarsh mentioned his plan to wear protective clothing – “so I didn’t need to worry about him.”
“It seemed surreal,” she said recently, “that you wouldn’t understand this child was suffering from her traumatic past.”
The Beems refused to let Libby participate in the experiment. They hired a lawyer and took the school district to court.
The trial
Libby talks with her mother, Julie Beem, in their Cobb County home. In third grade, Julie says, educators wanted to put Libby in a special school for behaviorally disabled children. “They were adamant,” Julie says, “that there was only one track.”
‘I couldn’t’
Libby will graduate with honors later this month from an online charter school. She takes classes from a part of her family’s basement coverted into a virtual classroom
Libby picks up Gregor, her Brazilian red-footed tortoise, from his terrarium. He lives in the basement classroom of Libby’s Cobb County home.
This story is part of a series on Georgia’s unique network of “psychoeducational” schools for children with behavioral, emotional and intellectual disabilities. More than 3,000 students across the state are assigned to the Georgia Network for Educational and Therapeutic Support, or GNETS. The full series is available online at myajc.com.
» Last Sunday in Part 1: Georgia’s psychoeducational schools are segregated not just by disability but also by race.
» Today in Part 2: A proposed behavioral experiment leads to a showdown in court.
» Coming Sunday in Part 3: Physical restraint, a last resort in dealing with troubled students, remains a commonplace technique in GNETS programs.
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