Reading this thread... doesn't it seem glaringly obvious why parents send their kids to oral schools? It doesn't have to do with speech skills. Let's face it, ASL-based schools have a lot of "oral failures". Shel, could you approximate what percentage of a class are transferred from mainstream/oral schools? Even when you educate the parents on what could go wrong in an oral school or mainstream, they are aware of it and will do their best to mitigate that issue. In oral schools, most children are on the same level since they apparently send the worst ones to ASL-based schools.
Why would you want to send your child to a school that has a lot of peers who are falling behind? And not to mention that oral schools have a higher ability to develop speech skills. Harder to learn to speak than to learn ASL, right?
I am just saying.. this doesn't seem to be the parents' fault actually. MANY parents of the deaf would have to take the plunge AT THE SAME TIME in order to have many deaf schools to have minimal amount of kids "falling behind".
Schools need to work together, man!
